The Gist:
A gay man (Min-soo) and a lesbian (Hyo-jin) have married each other to fulfill family, societal and legal obligations. They just have to play at being a couple for one year, then they can divorce and go on with their lives with everything they wanted. Unfortunately this act becomes harder and harder to pull off as life threatens to intervene and reveal their secrets.
Comments:
The movie is fairly well done, though the story gets rather melodramatic at times as society is shown to literally beat down people for the crime of being gay. Aside from this external homophobic melodrama affecting the characters, there's also self produced angst as the characters overreact and overact their soap opera lives.
So yeah, lots and lots of drama. Part of that is also do to essentially all of Min-soo's gay male friends being big queens. I've normally no issues with effeminate men in gay movies, except when it is used as a joke, and to an extent that is what is happening here. The exception being the character "Tina," who is played as bit of an effeminate clown. Unlike the rest of the secondary characters though, he is given enough of a background and motivation that he comes off as a well rounded interesting character who could almost be a real person (far more so than he somewhat boring dull lead).
Story and representation aside, there is also an issue with translations. Not a major problem, it's just that the subtitles in the version I saw were occasionally a little wonky with odd grammar or unusual word choices that made things a little confusing, such as when a character explains that he left Korea in order to move to Korea.
Overall the movie is okay for what it is, but what it is, is a bit too melodramatic for my personal tastes.
Women:
Yes
People of color:
Everyone. Unless we reverse the question to "Is anyone not Korean?" then the answer is no.
Gratuitous nudity:
No
- Director: Jho Gwang-soo Kim
- Writer: Yoon-sin Kim, Hae-yeong Park
- Actors: Dong Yoon Kim, Hyeon-kyeong Ryu
- Korean
- 106 min
- IMDB
