THERE ARE MOVIEGOERS who seek out arty foreign films in hopes of finding the substance missing from our domestic dollar-driven blockbusters, and then there are those who are content to soak up the latest saccharine swill with subtitles that now passes for imported cinematic fare. Both camps are likely to find something satiating in filmmaker Jeong-Hyang Lee's The Way Home, a South Korean paean to family that's capable of spinning poetry even while mounting a frontal assault on your pancreas. Precocious, bratty seven-year-old Sang-woo (Seung-Ho Yoo) is left with his mute octogenarian grandmother (Eul-Boon Kim) in the countryside while his mother looks for a job in Seoul. Bored and frustrated, the boy spends his days ignoring or yelling at his kindly host, despite her selfless acts of kindness toward him. Eventually, after countless temper tantrums and hurt feelings, a bond forms between the two. Lee's tribute to "all the grandmothers in the world" was a huge hometown hit, proving that some audiences don't mind the deadpan elegance of Keaton sitting next to Chaplinesque sentimentality. Full of exquisitely framed shots and long, silent takes, The Way Home has moments when it resembles nothing so much as a masterly crafted silent film, dotted with sequences so full of unforced tenderness and soundless grace that you feel a lump forming in your throat. Then a cloying piano-and-strings score kicks in, lest you forget you're required to feel "moved," and the mood swings from sublime to sickly sweet in seconds flat. Swinging between these poles like a pendulum, its schizophrenic tone ultimately frustrates attempts to establish something resembling "art." Unable to shake its desire to please, The Way Home eventually loses its way by picking the road most traveled. (David Fear)