Happy End

An excellently performed movie about our age of the equality of the genders. If men lose their jobs and their wives have wild affairs can a man forever hold his horses? An original story with a touching motherly daddy who knows when enough is enough...

Pretty insane to think that FL's actress was the same person that recently did Crash Course in Romance. ML's actor was in Old Boy, as well. This was a very solid movie in the "romance noir" genre, apparently. I have to say that I was glad not to have seen the poster, because that would have kind of ruined the surprise, whereas while watching the movie I was able to really be "fooled" by the writer's plot.

I really liked the movie stylistically, great attention to details. Though we didn't get flashbacks explaining what happened in the past, everything was hinted at as if we found ourselves "in the middle of things", to create the ambience.

Great actors, interesting story, this could be a very good movie, at least for someone who like this genre. Unfortunately, pace was terrible. One of the worst movies' paces of all time. I don't mind slow burn movies but a movie of this particular genre (something like drama/romance/neo-noir) should be faster. A slow movie should have great cinematography, should raise philosophical issues or something like that. This is the story of a man whose wife is cheating on him. Not an art movie. No need for shots that doesn't serve the plot, this is not a magical Wong Kar Wai movie. As it was progressing, it was more frustrating. It was very difficult to watch. At some point, it took almost a minute for the leading character to open the refrigerator. Come on, what is this?

Someone more patient than me might like it.

I only recently realized that Jung Ji-woo also did the kdrama series Somebody... I can certainly see where the tendency to plot twist and surprising endings came from. Another similarity, I guess, is the sexually explicit nature of the work, and the way the sex was actually instrumental in conveying something about the atmosphere that would have been hard to show in other ways. In other words, this is really not a situation where the sex was instrumental or there for fan service purposes, in my opinion: it was part of the characterization. Not as central as in a movie like Lust, Caution, but still... not gratuitous, contrary to other comments I had read.

The female actress playing ML's wife was extraordinary in her versatility: I saw her in other roles, she was pretty incredible in how varied the characters she interpreted were. The actor playing the husband was also incredible. I mean, when I have seen him in Old Boy I was stunned to see the difference, that was definitely impressive. The same could be said about the actor playing the lover.

This was an exceptional cast, and the director was also the guy that directed Somebody, which was one of my favorite dramas... talk about not knowing what you were going to get until the very and, and the writer/director pulling off a surprise ending.