[K-Movie Night] Be With You
by Dramaddictally
Welcome to K-Movie Night — a once-a-month feature where we microwave some popcorn, put on a face mask, and get cozy with a Korean movie from yesteryear. With so many films finally streaming (with subs!), now is the time to get caught up on all those movies we missed featuring our favorite drama actors.
Each month, we’ll pick a flick, write a review, and meet you back here to discuss whether or not it’s worth a watch. Super simple. All you have to do is kick up your feet and join us in the comments!
Movie Review
February is for love stories, as far as I’m concerned (see: Il Mare and Always from years past), and when it comes to creating classics, how could anyone pass up Sohn Ye-jin and So Ji-sub as the leading couple?
With that in mind, we’re watching the 2018 tearjerker Be With You — a story about a woman who reappears a year after her death with no memory of her husband or young son. The movie is a remake of the 2004 Japanese fantasy romance of the same name (itself based on a novel) and earned Sohn Ye-jin a best actress nomination at the Baeksang Awards.
With tissues in hand, I hit play, ready for a love-and-heartache overload.
Everything about this film is gentle. From the pacing to the characters to the cinematography, which has a fairy-tale quality as the camera crosses over the country house where many of the scenes take place. Light rain, vibrant green, wood and tin materials, with ivy overgrown on every outdoor wall — I get the feeling that myth and memory overlap, and we’re not supposed to be able to see the edges.
We open on an animated storybook for children, which gives away the movie’s end in the first five minutes. A mother penguin has left her baby behind to watch him from the clouds, but she’ll be back some day when it rains. And then, she’ll be gone again abruptly.
JI-HO (Kim Ji-hwan), the 8-year-old boy reading the book, holds it to be prophecy as he waits for the rainy season to see his mom. It’s been a year since her death and he and dad are holding down the fort at home — the lovely country house with patterned fabrics and hanging pots — but every available surface is covered with stuff, the drudgery of everyday life piling up for too long.
When we meet the widower WOO-JIN (So Ji-sub), he’s at his wife’s funeral. And every time we see him after, it’s as if he’s still at the same event. Cooking eggs for Ji-ho or cleaning the pool at the gym where he works, he’s so beaten down with grief that it lays like a heavy film over every shot.
And yet, there’s a hint of sweet in each interaction. Ji-ho’s hopefulness against Woo-jin’s grief somehow comes out uplifting as the young one tries to prod the older one into believing.
On the first day it rains, Ji-ho rushes to the train station — which is where the mama penguin arrives in the book. Woo-jin chases him there and then they wait, until the son is carried off crying because Woo-jin isn’t going to entertain this fantastical idea forever. But on their way back to the house, they come across a woman asleep in a tunnel, and she looks exactly like SOO-AH (Sohn Ye-jin), the wife and mom they’ve missed.
They take her home but she has no memory of either of them, and so, they decide not to tell her that she’s been dead. She was in the hospital, they say, and she should get her memory back soon. But as the days go on, they realize she’s not like her old self; she’s young and strong and refuses to let the 8-year-old win at any games — including when she boxes him into a bloody nose.
She’s curious, though, about their past and who she’s supposed to be, and Woo-jin begins to tell her stories of how they met. We see long flashbacks of their awkward high-school selves, as one mishap after another keeps them from truly talking. It’s Woo-jin’s story, so we only see his side, but it includes liking her for years and being unable to tell her, even after high school is over.
It’s in these flashbacks that we start to see Woo-jin as sort of a sad personality. The dead-weight of grief has heightened his condition, but he was never a happy-go-lucky guy. The nervousness he feels around this new version of Soo-ah isn’t so different from the nervousness he’s always had with her. And as he recounts these tales of their past, they start to move toward each other for a second time.
There’s an achy feeling in the way they fall in love. His longing settled as a knot in my stomach that wouldn’t go away, even as they actively choose each other. It’s a sensation brought about by knowing the end from the beginning, which makes us feel the same countdown as the characters. Even Soo-ah, when she eventually discovers the truth on her own, begins to prepare for goodbye.
The scenes that follow aren’t about staying forever or stopping what’s to come, but about which type of farewell, if any, can save us even a little suffering. Woo-jin and Ji-ho have already been grieving for a year, and the first time around was a surprise. Now, they have a runoff period, but will it guide them more gently toward loss? Or just make them anxious inside the time they have left?
The film settles on an answer but then provides a twist, which fills some gaps in the fantasy side of the story, but doesn’t increase its emotional resonance. The scenes that summon tears happen earlier, when Ji-ho, still so young, learns what it means to honor loss and even take on adult responsibilities for his lonely father.
While I had a dull ache and couldn’t ever fully relax, the light humor and sweet tone paste beautifully over the melancholy internal moods and washed-out sets to make this a lovely watch. Go Chang-seok as the comic relief and a late-stage cameo by Park Seo-joon add to the overall enjoyment — and made me want to hop a train to the countryside, where even when it’s dreary, it seems like something is always in bloom.
Join us in March for the next K-Movie Night and let’s make a party of it! We’ll be watching The Table (2017) and posting the review during the last week of the month.
Want to participate in the comments when it posts? You’ve got 3 weeks to watch! Rather wait for the review before you decide to stream it? We’ve got you covered.
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