Recently widowed Chunhee (Kim Hye-ok) has downsized from the house that she shared with her late husband Hyunchul, and has moved into an apartment building — but Hyunchul’s exquisite grand piano cannot fit in. Her new neighbour, conductor Minjun (Justin H. Min), who has moved from Germany to find the birth mother, offers to look after the piano in his apartment. Together with an orphaned piano prodigy whom Minjun has taken under his wing, they briefly form a family unit.

Kim Jin-yu’s follow-up to Bori (2018) is concerned with mortality and moving on. For it is a film of absences, where everyone is mourning the loss of someone else and burdened with their grief — but it also looks forward to the next generation’s future, lovingly handed down by previous ones.

Anton Bitel