The Bow

A sixty-year-old man lives on a fishing boat far out at sea with a girl he took in and raised from childhood. They rent the vessel to day fishermen and pass the time with fortune-telling rituals, but what the man keeps from the world is his plan to marry her when she turns seventeen, now only months away. When a young student comes aboard among the visitors, the girl's interest in him unsettles the secluded arrangement the old man has built his life around.

The Bow is a 2005 drama directed and written by Kim Ki-duk, the eighth of the thirteen films he directed and the one that followed 3-Iron the previous year. Han Yeo-reum plays the girl and Jeon Seong-hwan the old man, with Seo Ji-seok as the student and Jeon Kuk-hwan, Kim Ik-tae and Jang Dae-sung in supporting roles. It was produced by Cineclick Asia, Happinet Pictures and Kim Ki-duk Film, and took about 2 million US dollars worldwide.

On TMDB it holds a rating of 6.9 from 229 votes, while a small set of critics' reviews averages 6.8. The two sit close together, suggesting the film drew roughly similar responses from critics and the wider audience that sought it out.