NYKFF ’15: Wonderful Nightmare

You would think Heaven would have the best clerical help available, but it is apparently hard to find officious bureaucrats with good hearts. Just like they did in Here Comes Mr. Jordan and Heaven Can Wait, the celestial paper pushers have summoned a soul before its time. In this case, high-powered super attorney Yeon-woo still has a perfectly good body resting in a coma. If she merely takes the place of a woman whisked away one month early, she can be transferred back to her regular body and the life that goes with it. Of course, that will be plenty of time for her to forge emotional attachments in Kang Hyo-jin’s Wonderful Nightmare (trailer here), which closes the 2015 New York Korean Film Festival.

Yeon-woo grew up as an orphan when her sailor father was lost at sea and her mother died prematurely of a broken heart. She learned to rely only on herself. She now thrives as a cutthroat power lawyer, but concrete traffic barriers are just as solid for her as they are for the rest of us. Nevertheless, she was supposed to walk away from her accident—and she still will, once she has done a solid for Mr. Lee, the manager of Heaven’s processing center.

Yeon-woo’s instructions are clear. She is not to make any consequential changes to her host body’s life. Of course, the highbrow attorney chafes at their lower middle class lifestyle. She is also freaked out at the prospect of having a teenaged daughter and a son in kindergarten. At least her husband Sung-hwan is handsome, but his work as a civil service salaryman hardly impresses her. Eventually, you know exactly what starts to happen, despite Yeon-woo’s initially standoffish, nervous breakdown-like behavior. That means tough choices and sacrifices are inevitable.

Nightmare was a huge hit domestically, so you know you’re going to need a hanky. However, screenwriter Kim Je-yeong cranks up the sentimentality in rather clever ways. It is manipulative as all outdoors, but at least it calls back and closes loops in ways that enrich the narrative. We’re going to get played by Kang and Kim, but played well.

Uhm Jung-hwa is game enough in the ostensibly anti-diva diva role. In the 1990s, she was sort of like the Julia Roberts of Korea, but she is still at the top of her game. Obviously, you do not maintain that kind of clout by phoning it in. She also develops some appealingly easy-going chemistry with Song Seung-heon as her husband for the month. Rubber faced character actor Kim Sang-ho mostly keeps the shtick in check as Kim from above. However, the film’s real discovery is the charismatic Seo Shin-ae, who is perfectly cynical and sarcastic in a teen kind of way as her daughter Ha-neul.

You had better believe there are lessons to be learned in Nightmare. There is also a good deal of body-switching comedy that is more worthy of groans than laughs. Nevertheless, when the film throws down the melodramatic hammer, it somehow gets it all together and brings it home. In all truth, The Beauty Inside (screening today at NYKFF) is an even more emotionally satisfying romantic fantasy, but Kang closes strong. Recommended for fans of feel good, slightly supernatural rom-coms, Wonderful Nightmare screens this coming Wednesday (11/11) at the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of the 2015 NYKFF.

Venus Talk: Naughty Coffee Klatching

Some critics will reflexively compare this Korean relationship drama to that old HBO show that ended its run a decade ago. However, the three stars of this import were secure enough to allow a cameo appearance from BoA, the young and glamorous “Queen of Korean Pop.” In fact, the forty-something cast looks considerably younger than their long-faced American forerunners. They will still inevitably mismanage their private lives in Kwon Chil-in’s Venus Talk (trailer here), which opens in select theaters this Friday.

Frankly, this trio of friends is not so interested in talking, but they have to do something when they meet for brunch at Hae-young’s coffee shop. She is a single mother with a grown daughter she can’t get out of the house and the best boyfriend of the bunch. Sung-jae is mature, sensitive, and handy around the house, but harbors been-there-done-that feelings about marriage. Mi-yeon appears to be happily married, but her demands will put a strain on her relationship with her Viagra-bootlegging husband, Jae-ho. Shin-hye is more interested in her work as a television producer than any sort of romance, but a drunken fling with Hyun-seung, a much younger colleague complicates her carefully calibrated career.

Into these lives great turmoil will fall, but they always stick together—after a bit of judgmental cattiness. Sure, you probably suspect where Kwon and screenwriter Lee Soo-a are headed and have a pretty good idea how they will get there, but it must be said Venus is surprisingly fair to the guys. Frankly, the women are at least as responsible for their relationship angst and their partners, if not more so. This is particularly true in the case of Mi-yeon and the woefully cringey Jae-ho.

While never explicit, Venus is rather saucy, especially by the standards of Korean cinema. Not for no reason, most of the more suggestive scenes feature the photogenic Uhm Jung-hwa and Lee Jae-yoon as the impressively fit Shin-hye and Hyun-seung, respectively. They have okay chemistry together and Uhm nicely mixes attitude and professionalism in her straight forward dramatic scenes.

Yet, Cho Min-su once again steels the picture in a complete change of pace from her soul-shattering turn in Kim Ki-duk’s bracing Pieta. As Hae-young, she brings more dignity, forgiveness, and general humanity to Venus than you would ever expect to find in a cougar-ish chick flick. In contrast, Moon So-ri is stuck with the least sympathetic and most over-the-top of the lot, but she fully commits to the voracious Mi-yeon nonetheless.

There have been films like Venus before and there will be plenty more like it to come. Even so, it is a credit to Kwon, Uhm, and Cho how smooth it goes down, especially for those who do not have a strong affinity for the genre. It is well executed, but never pushes the envelope of women-centric relationship dramas. Mostly recommended as a women’s-night-out movie, it opens this Friday (2/28) in Honolulu at the Consolidated Pearlridge and in Vancouver at the Cineplex Silvercity.