Romance Archives - London Korean Film Festival

3670

admin — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 08:46:19 +0000

Park Joon-ho’s feature debut finds the sweet-spot intersection between two marginalised communities. For its protagonist Cheol-jun (Cho You-hyun) is both a North Korean defector, and gay. As he navigates the codified conventions of his new world(s), he tries simultaneously to come out and to fit in. Take the challenge and the plunge, and with Cheol-jun reap the eventual rewards.

Anton Bitel

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Layers of Summer

admin — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 08:17:21 +0000

When former lovers Yun and Gang run into each other, they indulge in an afternoon of reminiscing. Gang is willing to find their love again; Yun can’t forget what made them split up. This story asks: is it possible to meet the right person at the wrong time? Is it possible to start again, or will past errors carry too much weight? Yun and Gang must decide if they can find their way back to the love they once knew.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg

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Through My Midwinter

admin — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 06:26:31 +0000

Young couple Kyung-hak (Kwon Da-ham) and Hye-jin (Kwon So-hyun) are in love and deeply committed to each other as they prepare to take on the challenges of early adulthood. Kyung-hak is studying to become a police officer. Hye-jin is pursuing her dream job of working for the government’s tourism board. In everything, they place their relationship first, but life throws them a hurdle when Kyung-hak’s mother defaults on a $20,000 loan, which he as the co-signer is obliged to pay back. The couple is now faced with the first of what will be many difficult choices brought on by financial hardship.

Director Oh Seong-ho’s debut feature about a relationship under pressure is made vivid by the performances of Kwon Da-ham and Kwon So-hyun (a former member of K-pop group 4Minute) as the stressed but sympathetic couple.

Darcy Paquet

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Director’s Intention

admin — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 23:37:04 +0000

Busan-based location scout Sun-hwa (Han Sun-hwa) believes that a location should be invested with feelings to express the director’s intention – which gets personal when she has to work at the last minute with director Do-young (Lee Wan), the ex-boyfriend who some time ago left town (and her) to work in Seoul, and is now back for a trip down memory lane, and possibly to rekindle old love. Sung-hwa has a repertoire of resonant locations that she thinks will suit Do-young’s film, but is there still a place for her in his heart?

Like Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s 36 (2012), Kim Min-geun’s sophisticated second-chance romance foregrounds the contribution of a location scout’s work to a film. Agreeably self-reflexive and unusually understated in its melodrama, this locates nostalgia, situation and memory at the centre of cinema, and inevitably comes with a strong sense of place.

Anton Bitel

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Girls’ Night Out

admin — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 18:16:23 +0000

Three friends on the cusp of thirty share a flat. All three have so far avoided the direct route prescribed by their conservative society: from school/university to marriage and motherhood. Ho-jeong runs a small commercial art firm, Yeon works as a waitress and Soon studies at graduate school. Ho-jeong is the most frank and active about seeking sexual partners while Yeon and boyfriend Yeong-jak have a bit more serious relationship; Soon seems unable to find anyone but help, it turns out, is near at hand.

Kang Soo-yeon, as Ho-jeong, sparks well off fellow actors, the elegant Jin Hee-kyong as Yeon and Kim Yeo-jin playing the low-key Soon; among this talented ensemble it was actually Kim who gained most critical praise. Kang’s Ho-jeong ends up involved in an adultery suit, a reminder that until the draconian criminal statutes concerning adultery were overturned in 2015, the law could be a nasty weapon in the hand of any well-off vindictive husband or wife.

Mark Morris

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Rainbow Trout

admin — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 17:35:19 +0000

A small van-load of city people head into the hills. There are two thirty-something couples plus one younger sister, Se-hwa, off to visit old school friend Chang-hyeon. He has turned his back on career and middle-class comforts and operates a trout farm, his only company is a strange boy, Tae-ju who runs a kennel. When Tae-ju becomes fixated on lovely young Se-hwa, the urban sophisticates see their outing turn more than challenging.

The clash between city and country, urban middle classes and hard-edged rural folk, may have roots in mythical archetypes, although John Boorman’s 1972 Deliverance made sure that the myth was relevant to contemporary cinema. In this ensemble, Sul Kyung-gu appears in his first main role as husband to Jeong-hwa (Kang Soo-yeon), while Lee Eun-ju – fated to have a tragically brief career – debuts as Se-hwa.

Mark Morris

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Gyeongju

admin — Mon, 09 May 2022 13:40:10 +0000

Choi Hyeon, a Korean professor living in Beijing, returns to his homeland to attend a colleague’s funeral. There, an encounter with long-time friend Chun-won brings back memories of an obscene painting the men saw in a tea-house when visiting the city of Gyeongju. Haunted by an unresolved past, Hyeon sets out to find the artwork, only to discover it has disappeared, and that the shop is now owned by a young woman, Yoon-hee. An unusual relationship between the two soon develops, leading to unexpected and intriguing consequences.

Taking place over the course of a day bathed in beaming sunshine and a night suffused with melancholy, Lu’s work lives in-between life and death, past and present, real and surreal. Inspired by the Korean-Chinese director’s own life experiences, Gyeongju explores grief, memory and sense of place, all through the lens of one of Zhang’s iconic motifs: a man trapped between two cultures.

Massimo Iannetti

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Josée

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 13:00:43 +0000

Kim Jong-kwan’s film traces an evolving relationship between young student Young-seok (Nam Joo-Hyuk) and the mysterious Josée (Han Ji-Min), whose meet-cute involves him helping her after she has fallen from her wheelchair. French in origin, ‘Josée’ may well not be the real name of this bookish shut-in, as much as the stories which she tells about herself and her exotic travels seem beguilingly improbable and almost certainly mendacious. Yet Young-seok is fascinated by this strange mythomanic woman and her messy house of curiosities, and keeps coming back for her simple but tasty cooking.

Romance eventually blossoms between them during the harsh mid-winter, but in this melancholic tale of love, loneliness and loss, we are left to wonder just how much of it all might merely be Josée’s fanciful fictionalising. Hers is a peculiar story which, for all its slippery tricksiness, remains deeply affecting.

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Made on the Rooftop

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 13:00:13 +0000

Haneul (Lee Hong-nae) has a penchant for stoking drama in his relationship, but one day he takes things too far, and his boyfriend tells him to move out. At a loss, he temporarily moves in with his friend Bongsik (Jung Whee), who has made a name for himself as a live streamer. Bongsik in turn has a flair for fashion and believes in getting the most out of life at every moment. But something in him pulls back whenever anyone shows a serious interest in him. These two men, each struggling with love in their own way, pass the summer in their rooftop home in Seoul.

It’s tempting to call Made on the Rooftop a romantic comedy, but actually it covers a whole range of emotions in its 85 minute running time. Both joyous and sad in turn, the film paints a memorable depiction of gay life in Seoul and contains truly unforgettable characters.

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