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Films about the gravely ill tend not to contain many surprises. And when they are not terribly sentimental, trying to wring every possible tear out of the audience, they are far too joyous and upbeat—two equally dishonest and exploitative strategies. I dare say that Happiness (Hængbok) not only espouses milder variations of such emotions but also manages to conflate them in surprising ways. It certainly helps to have someone like Hur Jin-ho at the helm, a director known for quiet, tasteful melodramas such as Christmas in August (1998) and April Snow (2005). Similar to those two films, the overarching plot of Happiness is fairly ordinary—after being diagnosed with Cirrhosis, a hard-living, hard-drinking Seoulite retreats to a sanatorium in the countryside, where he meets a gentle, mild-mannered young woman, a resident patient, who is suffering from a severe respiratory disease, and, as you may have already guessed, the two fall in love—but, once again, Hur's treatment of the material, despite not straying too far from convention, renders it truthful and affecting. He possesses an innate sense of rhythm, a knack for shaping dramatic situations, a sensitivity for unusual relationships. He also has a keen eye for composition and color. And he knows how to draw good, understated performances from extremely popular stars, as he has done here with Hwang Jung-min and Lim Soo-jung. Hur, who, as usual, also co-wrote the film, has imbued his characters with greater complexity this time around, which, in turn, has only added more depth and texture to the narrative.

Absences (Apousies) is a spare, claustrophobic, Bergman-esque study of an emotionally constipated family on the brink of dissolution. Co-written, co-produced and directed by Giorgos Katakouzinos (1943-2013), known primarily for his controversial 1982 hit, Angel, reportedly the first openly gay Greek film, this allegorical story examines the dormant existence of three sisters living alone on the estate of their recently deceased father. Set on the eve of the First World War, the film somberly depicts the last vestiges of a decayed and decadent society—embodied by the father's lavish, imprudent lifestyle, whose resulting financial, moral and spiritual burden has fractured the psyches of those forced to bear it. This moving drama benefits greatly from Stamatis Spanoudakis's soulful score and Tassos Alexakis's gracefully intimate photography, which help expose its underlying core of sadness and regret.

World cinema is littered with parables about big-city vice and corruption seen through the eyes of an innocent outsider who, whether through circumstances or choice, finds him- or herself enmeshed in a world he or she barely understands, yet feels morally obligated to correct. Though the outline of El bonaerense suggests another entry into this dependable, if well-worn, category—it features a reticent provincial (Jorge Román) who, after being scapegoated for a crime, has no other option but to follow his ex-cop uncle's advice who has him enlisted in the disreputable "Policía Bonaerense" in Greater Buenos Aires—its characterizations and internal narrative logic carry the film far beyond the conventional and expected.

Co-written and directed by Pablo Trapero, once a leading light of the so-called Argentine new wave alongside Lucrecia Martel, Martín Rejtman and Lisandro Alonso, the film is not only both grittier and more absurdly comic than most of Sidney Lumet's policiers that are set in and around New York City, it also boldly lacks a character who serves as a moral compass. But it similarly depicts the metropolis as a writhing, slithering organism, consuming everyone and everything in reach. And, likewise, the more intimately detailed the proceedings become, the more they allude to the inefficiency at the greater sociopolitical levels, the bedrocks of institutional dysfunction (and individual corruption).

Shot verité style with an often gorgeously grainy color palette, the film is marked by a pair of sweaty, explicit, almost violent sex scenes that, similar to such moments in Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005), help illuminate both the underlying behavioral instincts of the protagonist (whose subjectivity remains opaque) and the dynamics of the relationship he shares with his significant other—in this case an older police instructor, one of many lively secondary characters. Offering no easy out for either its subject or the audience, El bonaerense presents a disarmingly disturbing vision of a society that has lost its soul.