CANCELLED DUE TO PENDING CENSORSHIP BY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT
Mi-yeon (Kim Ha-neul) is a documentary producer living in Seoul with her young son. She’s a powerfully driven person who has decided against marriage, having conceived her son through an anonymous sperm donor. Her busy life is more or less exactly the way she wants it to be, but her son disagrees.
He wants to find out who his father is, then he wants to meet him and find some way to make the three of them a big, happy family.
This is trouble for Mi-yeon. The word “precocious” does not begin to describe the little tyke, who despite his young age has a determination and resourcefulness that produces results. One day, to her shock, she finds out her son has boarded a plane to China after identifying Zhou Liyan (Aarif Lee), a hotel magnate’s son who is trying to establish himself as an artist.
When Zhou Liyan wakes up one morning to find a young Korean boy on his doorstep calling him Daddy, he will be just as shocked.
Making Family is a light, frothy and very cute film that combines a heartwarming story, some Korean and Chinese star power, and an adorable (or perhaps annoying, but for most viewers probably adorable) central performance by Canadian-Korean child actor Mason Moon Moorehouse.
Mason is a naturally gifted performer who has already left his mark on Korean TV and in the film Baby and I (2008), when he really was little more than a baby. In this film, he owns the screen as an elementary school-aged boy who acts much older than his years, but who carries a deep sadness within him.
Director Cho Jin-mo (The Suicide Forecast) imparts the tempo and atmosphere of a romantic comedy to this story, but on closer inspection it is rather light on romance. Instead, the key bond that is formed in this film is that between father and son.
Although they speak different languages, Mason Moon and Aarif Lee (aka Aarif Rahman, star of the smash Chinese TV drama The Empress of China) slowly build a relationship and some screen chemistry between them. Meanwhile, a side plot involving Zhou Liyan’s troubled relationship with his own father adds another layer to the main theme.
Although Making Family is technically a South Korean production, and not an international co-production, it fits within an overall industry trend that is bringing together talent and money from China and Korea. Always the trouble with such productions is finding a seamless way to combine the two cultures onscreen. With both language and cultural barriers to overcome, the resulting stories are often awkward and lacking appeal to audiences in both countries.
But Making Family manages to put Korean and Chinese actors onscreen together in a way that feels completely natural. Korean actress Kim Ha-neul, well-known both for her films (Blind) and TV Dramas (A Gentleman’s Dignity), delivers many of her lines in Chinese – an indication of how important the Chinese market has become for Korea’s star system.
At no point in watching Making Family are you unsure of the plot’s ultimate destination, but the film is so cute it is hard to resent its flaws. Family friendly (provided you feel comfortable explaining to your children what sperm donation is) and entertaining, it is a movie that is sure to appeal to a wide audience.