A week passes in Seoul, with a diverse group of couples and singles experiencing love or tragedy in strong doses. Broken families and newly-formed marriages, struggles with debt or with an uneasy conscience, conflict and resolution, sickness and health, newly-discovered love, the resurfacing of old relationships... As in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts or, more recently, Richard Curtis’ Love Actually, director Min Kyu-dong utilizes a large cast of talented actors to weave a multitude of stories into a single narrative.
Whereas sweet-tinged optimism tied together the various anecdotes in Love Actually, director Min adopts a more somber tone in All For Love that is sympathetic to the struggles of its characters, but not necessarily convinced that everything will work out for them. Thanks to this, real drama develops towards the middle and later sections of the film, as we draw closer to the characters and grow concerned for them. The ending finally brings everything together in an ambitious crescendo, leaving the audience satisfied but also, perhaps, a bit exhausted.
The cast is consistently good, so that each viewer may have a different favorite couple. Veterans Joo Hyun (A Family) and Oh Mi-hye are a treat as a gruff theater owner and a woman who rents a coffee shop from him. Despite playing opposite many attractive young actresses, Ms Oh is clearly the most beautiful woman in the film. Uhm Jung-hwa (Princess Aurora) and Hwang Jeong-min (You Are My Sunshine) provide a jolt of comic energy in their indignant bickering. Yoon Jin-seo (Oldboy)’s role of a young nun-to-be may seem far-fetched, but she acts with such charm that this is easy to overlook. Finally Cheon Ho-jin, a supporting actor on the verge of breaking out, gives a rock-solid performance as a tightly-wound, divorced father struggling to raise his son.