Amnesiac
attorney Yeon Suk-won has lost the last ten years of his memory. Actually, it
is more like thirty years according to the record of his billable hours. Pain
and suffering have been his stock and trade, but his own trauma caused a deep
psychological fissure. Yeon will try to fit together stray puzzle pieces of his
memory in Lee Yoon-jung’s Remember You (trailer here), which opens today
in Los Angeles.
The
immediate cause of Yeon’s memory loss was an auto accident, but something else
happened in his past that nobody around him wants to talk about. Frankly, there
are not a lot of potential volunteers. Nobody comes looking for Yeon as he
re-enters society after extensive in-patient therapy, except his law partner Oh
Kwon-ho. He is eager for him to resume work on Kim Yeong-hee’s murder trial,
but Yeon is no longer the legal shark she retained. There is something a little
fishy about her—and she thinks Yeon ought to know why, but he is clueless.
In
addition to the generally disorienting effects of his localized amnesia, Yeon
is also distracted by the mysterious Kim Jin-yeong, whom he constantly crosses
paths with. Obviously, she also has her issues and the resulting meds, but Kim
seems to know more about him than she lets on. Regardless, they quickly
commence a passionate, slightly dysfunctional affair. Yet, just when things
start getting good, flashes from Yeon’s past threaten to destabilize their
relationship.
Lee
plays intriguingly odd tonal games throughout Remember You in a mostly distinctive kind of way. Several times it
flirts with Hitchcockian suspense, only to revert back to melodrama in each
case. Still, it is very much a mystery and often rather atmospheric. Lee’s
screenplay (a fix-up of her 2010 short film) also manages to end on a note that
should satisfy romance fans, but is not the least bit sentimental or overly
pat, which is a neat trick to pull off.
Korean
superstars Jung Woo-sung and Kim Ha-nel develop some wonderfully potent yet
thorny chemistry as the romantic leads. Kim is particularly poignant as Kim
Jin-yeong. Rather than let loose with cheap theatrics, we very directly see and
feel how desperately she is trying to contain herself. As Oh, Bae Sung-woo (so
effective in Hong Won-chan’s Office)
memorably takes the clichéd best friend role and takes it in sleazier
direction. However, Jang Young-nam basically upstages everyone as the potential
black widow femme fatale.
