Flowers of Mold begins as the story of a solitary young woman with a slightly disturbing hobby. Late at night, Jisu (Kim Jae-kyung) quietly retrieves bags of trash from the communal bin of her apartment building. By sorting through and carefully cataloguing their contents, she comes to gain intimate knowledge about all her neighbours. Jisu approaches this task with the same professionalism she shows in her day job as a marketer for an online shopping company, but it’s clear that there is some deeper psychological need driving her. One day she is struck by the tidy, almost thoughtfully disposed items from the trash of her new next door neighbour. Using the information she has obtained, she hesitantly starts to approach him. Based on a short story by writer Ha Seong-nan, Flowers of Mold is equally effective as a perceptive commentary on modern urban life, and as a dark, bittersweet romance. 

Darcy Paquet