Breathless: The year is still young, but as of now we feel confident in proclaiming that Yang Ik-June’s feature-length debut BREATHLESS is the feel-good domestic violence movie of the year. Brutal, scabrous, and blackly comic, it embraces you even as it’s giving you a fat lip, not so much tugging on your heartstrings as yanking them with a vengeance until your guts spill out all over the floor. In the first two minutes, “debt collector” Sang-Hoon (director-writer-star Yang) comes to the rescue of a battered damsel in distress, only to turn around and slap her himself, posing a single, sad question: “Why do you just take it?” The question lingers as we follow Sang-Hoon through his routine of beating debtors to a pulp in front of their children. His after-hours activities mostly consist of awkward encounters with his sister and her meek son, Hyung-In, followed by assaults on his enfeebled father, whose own abuse terrorized their household and led to the death of Sang-Hoon’s mother. Every day is exactly the same, until Sang-Hoon meets schoolgirl Yeon-Hee (the wonderful Kim Gol-Bi), whose trash talk is more than a match for his foul mouth. Yeon-Hee has her own demons to contend with at home and, spitting obscenities back and forth, Sang-Hoon and Yeon-Hee become fast frenemies, forming a twisted family unit.