Harmony breathes new life into Korean melodrama by exploring the turbulent and tragic lives of female inmates serving sentences for crimes best described as acts of passion. The implication is that their actions may warrant punishment, but their sentences are disproportionately severe.
Jeong-hye (Kim Yun-jin) is serving 10 years for accidentally killing her abusive husband. She gives birth to a son in prison and raises him in the penitentiary. Her cellmates Kang Yu-mi (Kang Ye-won) and Kim Moon-ok (Na Mun-hee) are both on death row; the former for killing her abusive stepfather, the latter, the mother figure of the group, for killing her philandering husband and the woman he had a relationship with.
The women form a choir and find liberation in music. Ironically, their lives become complete not in the free world, but within the confines of the prison.
By the movie's end, they have achieved 'harmony' in more ways than one.
Harmony is now showing
YP rating: 4/5