Probably the director’s most challenging and audacious work about a social misfit who falls in love with a woman with cerebral palsy, featuring one of the all-timer performances by any lead actress in Moon So-ri.

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Premiered at Venice to positive acclaim, Oasis won four awards including the Marcello Mastroianni acting award for Moon So-ri and a special Director’s Award for Lee Chang-dong.

Unfortunately, it missed out on the Golden Lion, which the film so richly deserved to have bagged not because it was a great film, but because it was probably one of the most challenging films to have been made in that year, or for that matter, in any year. 

Oasis is also a very challenging film to watch, not only visually but also through the themes it explores.  But the cinematic experience is ultimately rewarding as we immerse ourselves in the audacity of Lee’s work.

It is a story about love between the two most unlikely beings.  One is a mentally ill man who has just been released from prison for manslaughter.  The other is a woman wrecked by cerebral palsy who lives alone in a small apartment, occasionally visited by her relative who brings food. 

Both Jong-du (Sol Kyung-gu) and Gong-ju (Moon) are social outcasts, misfits in a society that discriminates them because they look and act different.  But can love bring them together or will society tear them apart? These two inarticulate characters have to find out for themselves, and the answer is anything but straightforward.

“Why did you bring me flowers?”

The most striking aspect of Oasis is undoubtedly the quality of acting by its lead cast.  Sol’s acting comprises a range of socially unapproved manners including constant fidgeting, nose-digging, and acting aloof towards others in the public arena.  His performance is not showy, perhaps understated as he brings a natural quality that allows his character to be readily identified with. 

Even then, Sol is upstaged by Moon whose performance here is so stunning that it has still left me gaping in awe for days after watching the film.  She contorts her body and face in ways too painful to imagine, bravely inhabiting her character’s physical and speech disabilities.

What is most incredible is witnessing Moon’s effortless physical and behavioural transformation from a cerebral palsy state to a normal person in some of the film’s dream sequences that are done in one take without cuts. 

Admittedly, Oasis is very tough and disturbing to watch in the first thirty minutes or so after Gong-ju’s introduction.  Moon’s acting is so realistic that her character repulses us at first sight, yet we continue to be hypnotized by her performance. Like the titular character in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), we want to look away but we can’t.

Oasis explores the perils of discrimination and the lack of societal empathy and understanding for those who are unlike us through the overarching theme of miscommunication.  With this highly admirable film, Lee has exposed crucial issues for us to ponder, without giving easy answers.

Grade: A+

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