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 f
you're into Asian movies even just a little bit,
then you've probably heard of the South Korean
drama "April Snow" at least once (or a
few hundred times, give or take) throughout 2005.
The film has been hyped every which way across the
Asian continent, and its leading man practically
sold into servitude to promote the movie. It's
made a megastar out of Bae Yong-jun ("Untold
Scandal"), who is currently the hottest
male in all of
Asia
, as well as being the delight of
"aunties" everywhere. Mostly lost in the
shuffle is co-star Ye-jin Son, a veteran of Korean
melodramas despite her youth, and director Jin-ho
Hur, one of the best filmmaker currently working
in
Korea
today.
"April Snow" traces
the aftermath of a car accident that leaves two
lovers in a coma. The problem is that both are
married to other people, namely concert light guy
In-su (Yong-jun) and housewife Seo-young (Je-jin).
Gradually, over the course of a few weeks, the two
strangers come to grips with the facts before them
-- their spouses were having a secret affair, and
had been for quite a while now. Phone messages
exchanged between the two lovers and videos taken
during one of their many encounters only confirms
this suspicion. But what begins as mutual
embarrassment and sadness turns into something
more, as In-su and Seo-young find themselves drawn
to one another, and eventually enters into a
secret affair of their own.
"April Snow" is
purposeful filmmaking, the kind that has come to
define director Hur's still relatively short
career. There are no hints of romance between the
two cuckolded spouses until almost the 40-minute
mark, when she finds him tossing snowballs in the
parking lot alone at night. But romance doesn't
come easily, as Seo-young seems determined to
ignore the evidences of the affair, deciding
instead to play the dutiful wife next to her
comatose husband's bed. It's not until In-su makes
a brave move to silently sit down next to her that
Seo-young realizes it's no longer possible to play
naïve, if only because someone else knows the
truth.
Conceived and executed as a
relatively simple story with a linear progression,
"April Snow" has few surprises for the
seasoned viewer, and it's the little moments that
make the film worthwhile, including the first time
Seo-young and In-su hold hands. It's a quick
moment, and you might miss it if you weren't
paying attention, but it comes almost an hour into
the film as the two make their first secret
getaway. The irony of their affair quickly becomes
obvious to the audience -- they are replicating
the same methods, the same lies, and the same ways
to immortalize their affair that their
(originally) cheating spouses had done.
Of the two leads, it's
actually Ye-jin Son who carries much of the film
with her soulful looks and pitch-perfect
performance. The much ballyhooed Bae Yong-jun
handles his half well enough, even though one
can't help but notice that he's chosen to play the
part as impossibly understated, and as a result is
oftentimes overwhelmed by the presence of his
co-star in their scenes together. After 110
minutes, you can sort of understand why In-su's
wife strayed; to be honest, In-su is a stiff. Even
Seo-young's romance with him seems more out of
mutual need and empathy than anything overtly
desirous. Not that it's okay to cheat on one's
spouse, but you know, sometimes you can't help it
when you end up married to a dead fish. Not that
Seo-young is a ball of laughs herself, mind you…
If the premise of "April
Snow" sounds familiar, that's because it's
the same one used in the 1999 Harrison Ford movie
"Random Hearts", in which Ford played a
cop whose wife was cheating on him with the
husband of a woman played by Kristin Scott Thomas.
It's revealed in "Random Hearts" that
the cheating spouses weren't just out for a good
time, but were in fact quite in love, and that it
was simply bad luck they were already married.
There is no sense that Seo-young's husband and
In-su's wife were actually in love in "April
Snow", which hinders our acceptance of the
two cheating spouses as viable characters, and not
simply plot devices.
Although a good film, and
another proud feather in the cap of Jin-ho Hur,
"April Snow" is not quite as good as the
director's "Christmas
in August" or "One
Fine Spring Day", two masterpieces of
human drama that remains with the viewer long
after viewing. If anything, "April Snow"
is too simple for its own good, with no overly
complex themes involved beyond the tortured
feelings of its two protagonists as they end up
repeating, unknowingly, the very same tragedy that
brought them together in the first place. There
really is no reason why "April Snow"
should feel so limited in its human emotions, but
nevertheless, it is.
There is actually a very
curious moment in "April Snow" that
stuck with me for a while after viewing. In it, a
lawyer advises Seo-young and In-su to attend the
funeral of the young man killed in the accident.
They do, with predictably disastrous results. The
idea was to offer condolence in exchange for an
out-of-court settlement, but how anyone could
think this is a good idea is beyond the realm of
common sense. This is such a bad, bad idea on so
many levels, that if it actually takes place in
Korea
, it has got to be one of the stupidest idea ever
thought up by human beings. If nothing else, this
one moment in "April Snow" needs to be
seen to be believed. |
