The director seems uncertain whether he is making a slow-burning character drama or a satirical gangster movie about modern-day Seoul's answer to the Borgias.

Sex, death, greed, corruption: they're all here in handsomely mounted and highly polished cases. Taste the money - smell the glove.

A veritable orgy of vulgar melodrama, The Taste of Money might pass as satire if the conclusions drawn were not so broad and unsurprising.

Back when Im Sang-soo presented The Housemaid, he felt like he had more to say about the rich, but it's hard to tell what that is...