Singles

[CaptainVideo]

Another really good movie here. This one is more contemporary in its handling of the career and lifestyle choices of a group of singles than other Korean films I've seen. In case you're the type that turns off the movies as soon as the credits start rolling, I strongly urge you to wait and listen to the presenter's comments at the end of the film.

[ajk]

(Movie spoilers here)

Well, I watched it, but apparently I missed the whole point of it. Maybe you can help me out, CV.

It left me with a miserable, desolate, empty feeling. The one woman, she gets pregnant by her roommate and then doesn’t even tell him she’s pregnant, much less that it’s his. They‘ve obviously been living together for a while and the way they act, it’s like they’ve been married for years already. They’d be great together. But she just lets him walk away and leave town for his new job, even after he offers to take her with him and get her her own job. “Just find me a boyfriend,” she says. She ends up unemployed and with her family angry at her, and needing her friend to support her, and facing the pressures of being a single mom in a country that isn’t entirely progressive about that.

And the friend, the other lead, she has a dead-end job situation she obviously doesn’t care much for. Her boyfriend, she obviously doesn’t love him all that much—she comes right out and says that as soon as he got on that airplane, “everything became unclear,” but you could kind of feel it the whole way along. (And was it just me or did he seem almost old enough to be her dad?) You have to admire her for stepping up to take care of her friend, but that only makes it more depressing that a good person like her gets pushed around by her employer.

I turned on the end of the rebroadcast to watch the ending a second time, and it made a little more sense. I understood the point they were trying to get across, that just because you haven’t fulfilled high expectations by age 30, it’s not the end of the world. But both of those women were worse off when the movie ended than when it started! How am I supposed to feel hopeful or encouraged by that?

Quality-wise it certainly was a well-done movie. Some very funny scenes and good characters. But I think the idea was to leave the audience feeling good and I had just the opposite reaction. Did I miss something?

[CaptainVideo]

Well, unfortunately last night's presentation did not include the prologue and epilogue provided by that nice Korean gentleman that hosts the series on Mhz. I have the disc somewhere but it's not labeled so I can't get the talk verbatim, but here's the gist. He came up with pretty much the same summation that you did, but his wife pointed out that his viewpoint is limited by his default male gender. From her point of view, the film talks to the empowering of women to not be defined/limited by the roles that they assume when entering into relationships with men.

For instance, the lead character, Na-nan, decides not to go to New York and follow the man and the opportunity for entering design school, but on the other hand, she is free to pursue her life as she sees fit, not as the other half of a stock broker. Remember, she says that even if she doesn't achieve her goals by 30, everything begins again at 40. Her friend, Lee Dong-mi doesn't want to be the wife of her baby's father in some remote village, she wants to be an entrepeneur in Seoul. So, after hearing that analysis, I tend to agree with the presenter's wife.

The sad part relates to real life. After giving the wrapup the presenter went on to mention that the star of the movie, Jang_Jin-young sadly passed away in 2009 of stomach cancer. To make the news even more ironic and sad, she had played a character that was dying of stomach cancer in, Scent_of_Love (2003), and shortly before her death had married her long time boyfriend.

[ajk]

I appreciate the extra info, CV--thanks for the courtesy.

Gotta say, I don't much care for the host's wife's take on it. At least not as answer to my (and apparently her husband's) issue. It didn't matter to me whether or not the two main characters were empowered women, empowered men, empowered Martians or anything else. My problem was that they made some poor choices. And the whole upbeat ending about There will be other days and more chances, I just didn't see what was so hopeful about it because nothing left me with the feeling that the characters were getting any wiser or would make better choices down the road. It was their foolishness that bothered me. Their gender had nothing to do with it. The fact that they were able to make those choices as empowered women, that's fine, but if the movie was trying to make an upbeat statement about female empowerment, then it should have showed the main characters dealing with their relationship issues more wisely (which doesn't necessarily mean becoming dependent on men; there were other possible choices they could have made).

But now I'm trying to rewrite the script, so I'll just stop grousing about it. Hopefully I'll like the next movie better.

Very sad to hear about the actress's death. She probably had a long career ahead of her. Seems like there are a lot of sad stories about younger female Korean actresses. It must be a real pressure cooker in their industry (which wouldn't surprise me when you read about stuff like that Arirang "healthy legs" nonsense).