White Valentine [DVD]

This movie is hard to find especially ones with english subtitles. A lot of movies that dont make it into the USA gets subtitled, i supposed, by some Chinese student. This one is pretty good. I have a version of Il Mare with some horrible english sub with authentic packaging. I also have a Tai Seng version with very good subs but no korean audio. So finding a korean movie like this one, that is rare, is quite a treat.

I bought this dvd for ji hyun Jun, who's a pleasure to watch. The movie isn't bad, but it takes a while to get into. I would have to watch it a few more times before I can really give a fair and intelligent review.

Love seeing a young Gianna, move a little old.

The good, the bad, and the beautiful. You won't turn your eyes away.

Korean Director Yun-ho Yang was nominated in 2004 for the Tokyo Grand Prix @ the Tokyo International Film Festival for  Fighter In The Wind  & more recently in 2006 did a film called "Holiday." This film from 1999 was just released in the United States on DVD earlier this year. Gianna Jun is the lead. She won the Grand Bell award in Korea as Best Actress for her role in "The Girl" which was remade into "The Sassy Girl" this year. As Jung-min, she plays a young girl who has dropped out of school. She pretends to be a teacher and has a long-distance pen pal of a soldier. They fail to meet when they first attempt contact. Then Hyun-jun moves into the village. He is a sad man, about 10 years older, whose wife has died. He has a pet shop and scours the city looking for wounded animals to nurse back to life. He sends messages to his dead wife by pigeon that wind up going to Jung-min who begins to reply. The two eventually meet and start a very shy platonic flirtation. He breaks it off, going on to publish a book of photographs while she uses her art work to publish a children's book based on the story of their meeting. Jung-min's past life with a father and mother who died when she was young, the grandfather who raises her and runs a book shop and her inheritance of artistic ability from her father all are part of the back story that is revealed. Yun-ho Yang makes very simple but very interesting use of color throughout the film. We are often in settings like Jung-min's balcony or the park that has part of the screen in blue light with the foreground in orange. The scarf with which the carrier pigeon flies is blue while Jun-min eventually finds Hyun-jun by having the pigeon carry an orange thread across the city. I'm not sure if blue represented the past and orange the present or memory vs. the future, but it is an artistic touch in the film. The film ends with an open ending where you can make your own interpretation of what happened. This is an interesting Korean picture, slow moving but romantic. The actors don't display great depth of emotion, but do a good job. Enjoy!

Unlike most American romantics this one veered away from formula (mostly) and so was satisfying and enjoyable. The leads are nice to look at. The story made enough left turns to keep us guessing. GiannaJun really looked like a sheltered shy inexperienced teenager. She was actually much younger than the character. I was impatient at times with the script, especially regarding the peripheral characters, but I forgive it because of the times it worked with the leads.

This 1999 movie is a simple romantic lighthearted drama with excellent performances by both leads especially from Ji-hyun Jun as her first lead and first feature. Granted the movie may not be as compelling as her roles in My Sassy Girl, Daisy, Il Mare and Windstruck which followed and propelled her as an international star, but she shows her usual command of the role and she carries the movie extremely well. This is a must of course for her fans, and to others to discover.

This beautiful, heart-breaking movie is a despondent tale of unrequited love. But of course, the title of the film only really makes sense if you understand the Japanese and Korean traditions of 'Valentine's Day' & 'White Day.'Unlike in the West, only women are expected to show their affection for someone on Valentine's Day. But a month later on 'White Day,' (14th of March) the men are also expected to show their love.Of course, I don't believe that anyone in Japan or Korea takes either of these traditions too seriously. Just like in the West, it seems that these two dates are both commercialised and more than slightly tacky. But if they are taken literally, then these two traditions are both very sad and quite heart-rending; the person waiting a month or even eleven months, never knowing if their affection will be returned.In this film, Jeon Ji-Hyun plays a young artist who once wrote love letters to a man in the army. She was only a schoolgirl, but she'd pretended to be a teacher and the two of them had corresponded for five years.The man had wanted to meet her, and although she'd been lying the schoolgirl had still raced to the train station. But she'd arrived too late. She never received another letter. But deep in her heart, she is still longing for the love that 'Might' have been.This is just one of the sad stories of unrequited love that are told in this beautiful film.A young student is eager to 'Get To Know' the woman, but while she's flattered, she has no interest in him. Now that his own wife has passed away, the woman's grandfather is drawn to the owner of the flower shop; the first woman he'd ever loved when he was young. And as he rescues injured pigeons from the street and nurses them back to health, the owner of the local pet shop also writes letters to the woman who 'Left Him' and who he's desperate to see one last time, tying the letters around the birds' ankles before he releases them and hoping against hope that she might read them.Many people hate this film because there are no 'Happy Endings,' failing to realise that it is a story of unrequited love. Indeed, I believe the only reason why most people even watch this movie is because it was Jeon Ji-Hyun's 'Big-Screen Debut.' But although many of her later films were far more popular and successful, I do honestly feel that this may very well be the best film that she has ever made to date.There are no 'Happy Endings.' The princess will never wake up. And in the end, all humanity shares five things in common:"We Love, We Dream, We Hope, We Suffer & We Die."