Wanbyeokhan tain

Darkly comedic and deeply personal Korean movie about 4 couples where the guys have been best friends since grade school and with their wives they decide to play a game at a dinner party where everyone shares each other's calls and texts for the evening. You can imagine how that spirals out of control. Phenomenal acting and truly well worth the watch. The film finishes off with the saying "People live three lives. A public life, a private life, and a secret life." And I've never seen that so beautifully portrayed.

My expectation was low going in and I liked it a lot.. The scene is confined to one location and the plot was easy to follow with many twists along the way. Acting was excellent and this movie sums up how all of us live our lives with pursuit of happiness with great fear for failure along the way. All of us want to love and to be loved. Not sure how many of us are successful doing so.

Intimate Strangers is the South Korean remake of the Spanish remake of an Italian movie. That might sound terrible at first contact but Intimate Strangers is actually a rather solid tragicomedy.

The story revolves around a group of former high school friends who meet for a lunar eclipse and a house party. They decide to put their cell phones openly on the table as they pretend that they don't have anything to hide from one another. Things quickly spiral out of control as the group members discover shocking secrets of their friends.

On the positive side, the actresses and actors did an excellent job and are playing their roles with enthusiasm. The numerous secrets that are progressively being revealed are quite intriguing and blend in with the different characters. The movie offers food for thought and makes you wonder how well you really know those who are closest to you. The movie explains that there are three types of lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life.

On the negative side, the movie almost entirely consists of lengthy dialogues and monologues which make it hard to digest. The settings are static and uninteresting. The number of secrets being revealed is not realistic at all. The conclusion to the movie in form of a twist is lazy and disappointing.

To keep it short, Intimate Strangers is a tragicomedy saved by a strong cast and offers some food for thought. The execution is however lacking wit and realism. I would recommend this movie to avid fans of contemporary South Korean cinema only.

Intimate Strangers is a modern and highly suspenseful drama that effectively illustrated the dilemma between blissful ignorance or painful truth. The simple setting allows emphasis to be put on each and every one of the characters, and even though the humor is not always a hit, it is never a miss. The performances were amazing, the cast were able to show their excellence in keeping just the right balance between comedy and drama. The various twists of this genius screenplay will keep the audience with uncertainty throughout.

The movie was very attractive and worth-watching. Even though, there are still illogical details in the content, to me they are acceptable and not very annoying. The most disappontment is the ending, which had destroyed this whole movie :/.