Korean narrative entertainment, both movies and TV dramas, often exploits real world subtexts. Popular actors not only take roles that mirror some aspect of their private lives, but allude to those lives in their dialogue. The two lead actors in this impressionistic indie film play, at one point or another, popular TV drama actors and, in fact, both made their names in TV dramas. However, the director, Yun Su-ik, doesn’t take advantage of this idea the way a major studio production might. The gimmick is merely used to draw attention to the fact that these two characters, and thus the two actors playing them—who, coincidentally or not, share a surname—are spiritually connected in some way.

Soo-an (Han Hae-in) is a tomboyish student at a rural coed arts high school who is quite determined to become a professional actor despite periods of severe self-doubt. A transfer student named Seol (Han So-hee) admires her craft and Soo-an is quite flattered since Seol is already a professional actor and star, having entered show biz when she was 10 years old. The two quickly bond, more out of loneliness (their classmates are punishingly self-involved) than anything else, and it becomes evident during a spur-of-the-moment midnight sojourn to Seoul that Seol wants to be more than friends, but when they kiss in the vestibule of an apartment building Soo-an panics and the relationship grinds to a halt. Cut to some years later and the roles are reversed: Soo-an has made it as a TV star just as big as Seol once was, while Seol has mostly given up that life and hangs out near a beach where she spends her time surfing and getting drunk. The implication is that Soo-an’s rejection made her reevaluate her life. In the meantime, Soo-an’s nascent sexual attraction to Seol has blossomed in the sense that she is only drawn to other women, but at bottom she’s just as miserable as Seol is, resorting to drugs to alleviate her simmering regret.

Naturally, they reconnect and try to rekindle their mutual attraction, fueling it into something like real love, but Yun steers the story into fantasyland, with the two women paddling out to sea on their surfboards in the winter and getting stranded on a stretch of deserted coastline where, finally removed from society, they can consummate their feelings—or something like that. It’s not really clear what the last half hour means except that maybe you shouldn’t expect to win the love of someone else when you don’t know yourself first, which is a pretty bland theme. Yun takes a very promising story premise and turns it into a mediocre student art project. 

In Korean. Now playing in Tokyo at White Cine Quinto Shibuya (03-6712-7225), Kino Cinema Shinjuku (03-5315-0978).

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photo (c) 2025 Elles Films Co., Ltd.