A Moment to Remember
Undoubtly the best Korean love movie I’ve ever seen. Glossy, yet well-told and engaging. Get your handkerchiefs, or industrial strength paper towels, ready. It was so touching I even willing to admit I almost cried at 2 scenes. *blush*
Korea seems to be a region plagued with romantic couples suffering from debilitating health problems. It seems leukemia, brain cancer, and other assorted maladies have wreaked havoc on the region with so many tragic-romance movies themed around this, but A Moment to Remember trumps them all. In this melodrama, Kim Soo-Jin (Son Ye-Jin) contracts;- get ready for it - Alzheimer’s Disease! Yeap, the disease usually reserved for the ailing elderly is now going to be bequeath upon a twenty-seven year-old girl-next-door through her family genes. Her new husband, Choi Chol-Soo (Jung Woo-Sung) is an impossibly macho man must deal with this tragedy befallen his young wife.
The story starts with Soo-Jin, waiting at the train station and being PPK by her married boyfriend as they plan to elope. She then bumps into a Chol-Soo and a coke snatching incident take place. Sparks are struck, but a flame doesn’t build till they cross path again when she sees him at her fathers construction site, a meeting at her collegue’s gallery (and another coke snatching incident). But what really stole her heart is when Chol-Soo decks a snatch thief with the door of his jeep. This incident totals Chol-Soo’s windshield, but he valiantly drives Soo-Jin home while wearing safety goggles to keep the dust from his eyes and giving Soo-Jin’s a welding mask which she daintily wears to protect her delicate features from wind burn. The stars make their characters exceptionally engaging. Son Ye-Jin gives felt emotion to her character’s varying emotional states and her portrayal of the super sweet and beautifully dream girlfriend would keep anyone with a Y chromosome glue to his seat. Jung Woo-Sung on the other hand is indeed a hunk but effortlessly makes this hunk (Chol-Soo) a likable hunk, and I find myself personally rooting for him (Chol-Soo) even though I fell in love with Soo-Jin. The two encounter all the regulatory obstacles faced by any on screen couple during courtship and their love are strengthen every step by them overcoming each together and finally ending up tying the knot.
Alas though, sooner or later, a 400-ton tearjerker freight train will smack this perfect couple with all the brutal screenwriting strength it can muster. Small hints are dropped from minute one. Dad says to Soo-Jin, “Being able to forget easily is a gift,” and Soo-Jin keeps forgetting little things with oh-so-cute facial expressions. Too bad it’s not just her character’s fussy cuteness that causes her to forget all kinds of stuff but the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease. Indeed from the 2nd half onwards we get to sit back and brace ourself watching the horrible suffering the couple goes through with the full knowledge that impending doom threatens their perfect lives. We cry with them and cheer for them as they go through the cycles, as if on cue. Essentially the ending is left to the viewer to complete and being a realist (or some say pessimist), in true fashion, I felt it most contrived and bittersweet. It’s simply mean that the director tried to create hope where there essentially was none. What is the actual moral or point that the director wich to convey? Nothing much but a very touching tragic-romance, but it does essentially, raises an interesting point to ponder, whereby love in itself is a collection of memories and past experienced perception…and should we take this away…will love still be there?
June 20th, 2005 at 5:39 am
man, i hate romatic stories, but i do like writing them so i can laugh at the jerks who actually cry