Synopsis
 Mal-suk is a widow with one child. Persuaded by Manager KWON of a marriage consultation company, Mal-suk pretends to be a Korean-Japanese war widow, participating in the con. Chan-il, Mal-suk’s brother, is a cleaning man. He lives a harmonious life raising a son and daughter. A widow named Keum-seon moves into the house across from Chan-il. The widow is from the country. She lives a solid life but her son is a troublemaker.

 Program Note
 The original title for this film was Five Widows, though, it reflected the film’s ‘dark mood’ the title became Widow Dance. The film starts with the film credits over the images of Seoul City being exposed globally for the upcoming national events such as 86 Asian Game and 88 Seoul Olympic along with women working in the area of poor hillside village in the opposite side of its global images. It is similar to People of the Slum and Children of Darkness Part 1, the film is based on the process of rapidly growing Seoul City and ghetto where demolition threatens the lives of people.
 Widow Dance gazes at the geopolitical, mental shade and exhaustion caused by the ‘project of modernization’ through the episodic hard lives of women who are victims of fraudulent marriage and widowed by a death of street sweeper husband. The main elements of the Widow Dance are newly named poor hillside village and the urban poor, class distinction and mental devastation, and pseudo-religion that burrow though the desolation. The director LEE Jang-ho utilizes, rather coarsely, satirizing etiquettes and ironical techniques to show his affection towards lower class women and sharp class distinctions. Overlapping with Seoul City views from the village, the last shot framing the widows of poor hillside village like a picture of sacred women seems to signify those women as ‘Homo Sacer’ in the process of modernization. (KWON Eun-sun)