Shown at the Cannes Film Festival this vear, The Personals tells of a woman who gets a new view of life from escaping her own past, with a serene and silent voice which is at the same time poignant. After her married lover disappears without a word, Du Jiagen, the oculist, leaves a message every day on his answering machine. She runs a personals column in the newspaper and starts interviewing the various men who call her. Ranging from a seventeen-year-old student to a retired serviceman, from a worker to an artist, men with a wide range of characters and backgrounds confess their deepest desires and secrets through these short interviews with her. One day, she hears unexpected news from her lover′s wife, who picks up the phone while Du Jiagen is talking to the answering machine. The subtitles informing us of the personal situations of the characters, the high-angle cinematography, and the simple mise-en-scene make the film look more like a documentary, and belp the audience to observe from a distance the meetings between the strangers. However, the audience′s point of view changes as the story progresses, when she begins to open her heart in the interviews, At this point, the characters desires, based on suppression and loss, reflect our own desires, and the ironic result of her pains and the peace she achieves in the end also come to us as if we owned a piece of it, too. (Joo You-Shin)