Since it was sold out on Sunday, we went today and got a ticket, yay yay! It’s a little sad because on Sunday it was screening in the nice CineStar while today, we had to go to the Delphi yet again. On a happier side note, however, I have finally seen the top part of the Delphi for the first time – there were even comfortable couches with silly fleur de lys patterns embroidered on them. XD That alone made this screening very interesting for me.
Meotjin Haru (My Dear Enemy)
South Korea 2008, Lee Yoon-Ki, 123′
Okay, the main characters are annoying, this is perhaps what I will remember the best from this film. Then again, this is the very first film I have seen that deals with a relationship of two people who have broken up before. It might sound so trivial and obvious, but who has ever bothered to make a movie out of this? As much as the film might have felt melodramatic and banal at times, it’s my first movie about a normal and simple broken relationship. Compared to that, there are way too many movies about marriages, divorces, new loves yadda yadda. Except for “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” (which is way too pretentious and unnatural to compare it with “My Dear Enemy”), people never get together or even simply meet after breaking up.
In the Q&A, the director was asked why he thought of making a movie about a past love, and my initial reaction to that was “Why not?” But now I realize that it might not be as natural and obvious to make a movie like that.
In that respect, I have liked how the movie unfolded. As much as I hated both characters at the beginning, I knew that they would be slowly warming up, and although I have expected it, I loved the scene a lot in which they showed that the male character is an outstandingly great person who actually helps out people selflessly. If I remember back, I only know one single person who helps people out of selflessness, not out of weakness – and this person had a room in which you literally couldn’t walk without stepping onto something. I think it was very heart-warming how they showed why this man is actually worth loving and I wished the main characters were better actors so the last scene would have had a bigger impact on me.
So this is what I disliked about the film: the execution. The actors were horrid, the cinematography mediocre at best (in my opinion), the precise execution of the dialogue was not sophisticated enough for me (yes, I admit that my benchmark is Horváth). And oh god, the directing… way too many useless scenes, and the actors were yelling at each other so much it made my head hurt. But the story itself is quite a sweet one. It might not sound like it, but watching this film was actually memorable for me: It has great characters, a nice albeit predictable storyline and would be such a great movie if it lived up to its potential.
Oh this is quite unexpected for me, because I saw this movie coming 2nd place in top 5 Korean films in a certain article. But then again, I shouldn’t be that surprised. I mean, the movie ‘The Chaser’ came 3rd, and I thought it was mediocre, so maybe it was a popularity top 5.
Although I am surprised to see that actors were horrid, at least I thought the female actress’s performance was brilliant in her last film Secret Sunshine, which won her best actress in Cannes.