When Hollywood tackles a subject like a romance between two mentally or physically disabled people, the result is almost destined to be a piece of sappy sitcom fantasy like Garry Marshall’s “The Other Sister” (1999). What a change–and a revelation–it is to encounter a film like Lee Chang-Dong’s “Oasis,” a gritty, almost brutally unsentimental treatment of an unlikely coupling between a semi-retarded man with a criminal past and the palsied young woman whose father he was jailed for killing in an auto accident. Told in a naturalistic style occasionally broken by fantasy sequences holding out a slender sense of hope but inevitably returning to cruel reality (the most elaborate of which, bringing to life a picture on the woman’s wall, gives the film its name), the picture, despite the grime of its setting, the frequent unpleasantness of its situations and the poverty of its characters, exhibits an astonishing purity of tone and theme.

One of the unlikely partners featured here is Hong Jong-Du (Sol Kyung-gu), a just-released prisoner who’s arrested by the Seoul police when he’s unable to pay a restaurant bill. He’s bailed out by his younger brother Jong-Sae (Ryon Seung-wan) and taken to the small apartment where their mother (Kim Jin-jin) lives with older brother Jong-Il (Ahn Nae-sang) and his wife (Chu Gui-jeong). But he’s hardly welcomed back warmly. The surly Jong-Il gets him a job as a restaurant deliveryman, but the erratic, childish Jong-Du loses it when he wrecks the diner’s motorcycle while chasing a movie crew, and his brother puts him to work in his auto repair shop instead. Meanwhile Jong-Du pays a visit to the family of the man whose life he took in the accident, only to find the son Han Sang-Shik (Sohn Byung-ho) and his wife (Yoon Ga-hyun) moving out of their shabby apartment, leaving his palsied sister Gong-Ju (Moon So-ri) alone there in the dubious care of her unreliable neighbors. (As will later be revealed, they’re moving into a much nicer place in a building reserved by social welfare services for the physically impaired–using her name as the occupant.) Han throws him out, but Jong-Du is moved by Gong-Ju’s beauty and isolation, and returns to the apartment. After her initial terrified resistance, which leads him to become briefly violent, Jong-Du regains control of himself and offers her his help. Eventually the young woman responds to his halting approach, and before long they’re actually enjoying one another’s company and even some “dates” outside. Unfortunately, the reaction of others to the couple is one of fear and dismissal–a scene in a restaurant where they try to get service is especially painful–and when Jong-Du unwisely takes Gong-Ju to his mother’s birthday celebration, the result is a disaster (and leads to an important revelation about how her father was actually killed). Back in her apartment, the two sleep together, but her brother interrupts and calls the police, charging Jong-Du with rape. Gong-Ju, whose condition worsens under stress, is incapable of explaining, and Jong-Du is arrested, escaping to return to Gong-Ju’s apartment for a final visit that’s ever-so-slightly triumphant but ultimately very sad.

There are actually two parallel story threads here. One, of course, is the central romance, beautifully played by Sol and Moon. Consistently working his thin, reedy frame and expressive face, Sol creates a potent figure of a disturbed, volatile but vulnerable man capable of real feeling but also of abrupt anger and violence; Moon is simply amazing at conveying not only Gong-Ju’s crippling infirmity but her underlying emotional pain and intrinsic strength of character. But their relationship is portrayed within a wider context of communal and familial hostility. Neither Jong-Du nor Gong-Ju receives any real support from their relatives; indeed, both are not only ignored by them as much as possible, but used despicably whenever it suits them. The picture is thus not merely a beautifully detailed depiction of a misunderstood, doomed romance, but also a powerful indictment of the treatment of disabled people in contemporary Korea.

There’s nothing slick about the film from a technical perspective, but the grey, grubby production design by Shin Jum-hui and Choi-Young-taek’s deliberately gritty cinematography create the perfect background atmosphere. In the end, in spite of its grimness and its basically tragic outcome, “Oasis” is well titled. This tale of an unexpected exhibition of sympathy crushed by societal indifference and incomprehension may seem parched on the surface, but its honesty and avoidance of comfortable closure make it a refreshing change from the sort of phony uplift such stories ordinarily receive on the screen.

Grade: B

One of the talents of the title character in Shemi Zarhin’s Israeli film–a remarkably even-tempered teenager who acts as peacemaker in his own fractious family even as he feels the first pangs of youthful lust and his teachers mull over his level of intellectual capacity–is making elaborate pastries and cakes. That’s entirely appropriate, because “Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi” is as sweet as any dessert the young man could ever concoct. Happily, it’s pretty delicious, too.

As played by Oshri Cohen, who looks remarkably like a full-sized version of Elijah Wood, Shlomi is a young man whose indifferent performance at school leads to the threat of expulsion. At the same time he longs to take his newly steady relationship with schoolmate (Rotem Zisman) to the next level, something she teasingly resists. At home, Shlomi lives with his abrasive mother (Esti Zakhem) and his doddering but supportive paternal grandfather (Arie Elias), who fantasizes about serving in the army with Menachem Begin. He also has to contend with his father (Albert Illouz), who’s been thrown out of the house by his wife for reasons of infidelity and now schemes insistently to return; his older brother Doron (Jonathan Rozen), a lascivious would-be musician on whom his mother dotes (having provided him with one of her kidneys); and his married sister Ziva (Rotem Abuhav), who regularly leaves her husband and returns home because of hubby’s activities on the computer. While trying to maintain a semblance of peace among all his quarreling relatives, Shlomi also falls for a free-spirited young woman named Rona (Aya Koren) who lives next door (and who’s supposedly involved with Doron’s band mate), and is discovered to have untapped intellectual potential by his principal (Yigal Naor).

There’s a heavy load of whimsy and cuteness in the way Zarhin ties all these story threads together and works them through, and his picture often threatens to degenerate into a feature-length sitcom centered on a likable schlub dealing with a bevy of colorful zanies, on which has been superimposed a teenage version of “Charly.” What keeps it from descending into saccharine banality is the gentle, unforced quality of Cohen’s performance, which helps to make Shlomi a character one can really root for rather than simply pity. And while the family business never really transcends formula–undermined by supporting performances which slip too easily into caricature–Shlomi’s relationship with Rona, abetted by a nicely nuanced turn from Koren, works well, and the material between the youngster and Naor’s affable teacher is charming, too (although a digression concerning a lunch between the principal and Shlomi’s mother doesn’t come off). There’s never any doubt that everything’s going to work out in the end, of course–even the one sad moment in the narrative will come as a surprise to nobody, and is more glowingly nostalgic than truly tragic–but though its destination is entirely predictable, the warm-hearted picture proves a quite pleasant vehicle for getting there. Its look complements the content, with Itzik Portal’s camerawork (shot originally on digital video) unspectacular but inviting.

One can’t deny the manipulative nature of “Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi,” but thanks especially to Cohen’s winning presence, you’ll probably be happy to make its acquaintance.