The Korean films of the early 1990s feel awfully distant from the cinema of today. Even 1960s and 1970s films are screened and discussed more frequently than the largely forgotten works of that more recent era. But a few remain vivid in the memory. One of those is Lee Myung-Se’s 1990 feature My Love, My Bride, starring Park Joong-hoon and the late Choi Jin-shil. The story of a young couple in the difficult, early stages of their marriage, My Love, My Bride was the inspiration for a whole series of comedies about gender relations and marriage. But in the end, none of its imitators were able to capture Lee’s particular blend of insight and artistry.
So it’s not surprising that contemporary filmmakers, looking back over the history of Korean cinema, should single out this film as something worthy of revisiting, and indeed, remaking. Lim Charn-sang’s My Love, My Bride is a remake of Lee’s classic, starring Shin Min-a (A Bittersweet Life) and Jo Jung-suk (Architecture 101) as the young newlyweds Mi-young and Young-min. They are an undeniably cute couple, who openly express their affection for each other. But like all couples, tensions run beneath the surface.
Young-min is a civil servant engaged in social work, but his deeper ambition lies in writing poetry. The daily struggle of writing is a refuge for him at times, but also a point of marital contention when it gets in the way of other aspects of life. Mi-young, for her part, teaches in an art academy, but has largely set aside her own ambitions as an artist. Initially content with the comforting security of married life, as time goes on she starts to question herself, her desires, her goals, and whether her marriage is a success.
Comic dramas about newlyweds may adopt a realistic tone on the surface, but in the end, most of them only reproduce fantasies. Beautiful images of beautiful people reinforce the positive themes of domesticity, companionship, and security. This film is not entirely free of such gestures, but one of the key motives driving the plot is an attempt to pierce a few fantasies about marriage, and to show how much of a challenge it really is for two people of different backgrounds to live with each other. Love typically does conquer all in the movies, but this film shows how determination, common sense, listening skills, understanding, and a willingness to compromise are all equally essential to making things work.
For the most part, the remake stays pretty close to the original’s plotline, apart from a few scenes that don’t match with the sensibility of today’s generations. In so doing it retains most of the spirit (though not the cinematic style) of the original, distinguishing it from other recent comedy-dramas about marriage. Fans of the original will also note that two actors who appeared in the 1990 film as Young-min’s co-workers return as different characters in the 2014 film: Yoon Moon-shik makes a brief cameo as a regular beneficiary of Young-min’s social work, and actor Jeon Mu-song plays a poet who serves as a role model, and later a mentor, of Young-min’s.
Acting in the shadow of such legends as Park Joong-hoon and Choi Jin-shil must have been intimidating for this film’s leads, but they rise to the challenge. Director Lim Charn-sang allows their performances to dominate the film, and their acting is both assured and touching. Well-known character actor Ra Mi-ran also steals the show in each of her scenes as the couple’s inquisitive neighbor. Despite being very much a slick, commercial package, there are moments in My Love, My Bride that feel very human, and for this we can thank both the original screenplay and the talent of the actors.
Darcy Paquet