Cheob-sok

This was the first korean movie I ever saw and I admit I loved it at that time. For once it was fitting my own situation quite perfectly... I found my match through the internet and she sent me that movie. In Germany they bought the rights and made a (bad - like most remakes see Nikita or three man and a baby) "copy" of it. When "You've got Mail" came out I only thought that the American one was a poor and boring remake of that lovely and romantic piece of art that "The Contact" is.

It is an okay movie. The characters were sound, the story fairly believable with everyday people and situations.

The story involves two strangers, a man and woman, communicating via the internet (like you've got mail). They are caught up in their own love triangles (kind of like how Tom Hanks and Meg Ryans both had their significant others while chatting), they share their emotions via an old record (I'm talking the kind with the needle). Finally they are able to remove themselves from their troubled relationships and are thus able to meet up and of course hook up. You know its coming, it wouldn't be a movie if it didn't happen, however the last maybe 3 minutes of the movie would make any movie watcher go WTH? Go get her, this part of the movie I didn't understand. But then again, Tom Hanks didn't tell Meg Ryan either. It is all for drama. Not a whole lot of funny stuff going on in the movie.

6/10, the internet isn't booming anymore, there's a lot of sleaze bags out there now, I wouldn't recommend talking to random strangers on the internet unless it is through some legit site and even then...maybe. I'm not a fan of the ending, I personally wanted to kick the guy.

This is an interesting movie. On one side you have a music producer who received an lp from someone in his past. He decided to play the song on his radio program. On the other side, you have a tv shopping network telemarketer out for a night drive and while listening to the song played by the music producer she found herself in a road accident. The song by the velvet underground took new meaning for Soo-hyun and she emailed a request. Dong-hyun, the producer, met Soo-hyun through chatting. Later as they shared stories and problems they realized that each one was entangled in a love triangle (past and present).

One might think that this film seems familiar when compared with some foreign box office hits. However, I enjoyed the most its attention to tensions in conversations, how the characters' actions and facial expressions revealed what they did not want to know and did not want others to know. The film also focused on scenes depicting the characters in the same place but not seeing each other (literally and symbolically). A play on its title, contact.

In the last scene, some members of the audience could not believe at what's happening (shots before the film's end). Some would verbalize their thoughts on the matter. I guess they felt the tension and urgency of the scene. I think that is the beauty of the last scene. I guess you just have to see it and judge for yourself.

This is the feature film debut of actress Do-yeon Jeon who went on to win best actress by unanimous decision for her role in Secret Sunshine at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. If you are a fan of her work you should definitely see The Contact. It's not a great film but her performance in it makes it more than worthwhile.

The Contact is the story of two people, each involved in their own forlorn love triangles, who meet on the Internet and slowly build a friendship acting as advice-givers to one another. They share the same space on screen several times without knowing it because neither one knows what the other looks like. Comparisons have been made to You've Got Mail which came out a year after The Contact, but beyond the, uh ... internet connection, there's not much else in common. You've Got Mail was a romantic comedy, which suited the actors starring in it, while this film sports a somber quality, more suited to the actors starring in it. Do-yeon Jeon has a wistful glamor about her that comes from the inside, and Suk-kyu Han, who plays the male lead, has a "woe is me" air about him that is not the least bit amusing and comes off as a little introspectively self-important.

There is about three minutes of (in)-action just before the end of this film in which you will hate Han's character for the decision he seems to be making and the effect it has on Jeon's character. If there were a little more plot substance to account for his inaction, well ... there'd be a little more plot substance.

It's substance that this film lacks in the overall, especially in Han's character. He's a radio show producer who is always being reprimanded for inserting 20 minute songs into the playlists. He receives an anonymous package one day that contains a Velvet Underground album which becomes the link between our protagonists. Han is convinced his long lost love sent it to him but doesn't know why. He plays "Pale Blue Eyes" from the album and receives a request via the internet the following night for the same song, and that's how he connects with Jeon.

Han contacts the person, Jeon, who made the request, hoping it is his old flame or someone who knows her and made the request on her behalf. Jeon lies and says she knows the person Han is looking for. As that little fiction plays out, so do the characters' back stories.

Han's long lost love broke up with him many years ago and fell for his best friend, an army buddy. When the army buddy is killed in an accident, Han thinks the girl will come running back to him, (now that the competition is dead!) but Han is somehow implicated in the cause of the accident and a tangled web is weaved. Han also deals with internal office politics complicated by a beautiful woman who becomes his main writer for the radio show and an emotional distraction.

Jeon, on the other hand, marches forward emotionlessly after her unrequited true love falls for her best friend and roommate instead of her. While Jeon's love triangle plays out a little more interestingly than Han's, it's the emotionlessness of her character, which isn't cold and unkind, but sympathetic and sad, manifested in her inability to cry, that we come to focus on. In a train wreck of plot development, Jeon is driving her car the night Han first plays "Pale Blue Eyes." She witnesses a terrible accident, but it is the song, not the tragedy, that almost makes her cry. Hence her request to hear the song again. She wants to cry.

The Korean film's plot was made more complicated to this viewer, as train tickets, movie stubs, and other written materials are passed around without translation. Even without a good story or all the facts to go on, I was swept away by Jeon's portrayal of a woman who wants to find love but must discover first what it might look like. She's a tremendously skilled and nuanced actress. I recommend this film for those looking for a night of romance rental theater or a romantic character-study piece.

When I first ran across this gem, it was about 3am. The scene with the car accident was just occurring. I find this to be very fortunate, because if it hadn't caught my attention, I might have kept flipping the channels right past it. Let's just say that the car accident really grabbed my attention.

Here was this seemingly serene movie, lovely young woman driving along, listening to Velvet Underground, and all of a sudden, the scene is contrasted by this amazing accident! The accident actually sets the tone for much of the movie, which is why I even bother to mention it.

The accident leads to a scene where the audience discovers that Soo-hyun has a problem with her tear ducts, which seems to symbolize that she is out of touch with her emotions, or at least has trouble expressing them to those around her.

As for the acting, it's brilliant. The characters aren't perfect. If they had been perfect, this movie would have been akin to "You've Got Mail," which essentially pales in comparison to "The Contact." "You've Got Mail" is nothing more than the simplest of unlikely love stories. But with "The Contact," there's a certain unpredictability. The characters seem so authentic that you don't know who will end up with who in the end.

If you should ever have the chance to see this film, and you're the sort of person who likes something different from the monotonous American romances, be sure to see it! So far as I'm concerned, there's not a dull moment, and the ending is exquisite.