Love Story x 2

… I honestly cannot think of a good title for this one.

A few years ago a novel came out in Japan. Called Socrates in Love, it eventually became a bestseller among millions of Japanese readers, beating the record of one of my favorite Japanese novels, Norwegian Wood. It was a simple enough story of love and moving on. It was nothing too highfalutin, the novel was simply a tale of pure love. Now if you’re as jaded about the whole love thing as some people are, you’re better off passing on this.

Soon two movies came out adapting the material: a rather faithful Japanese adaptation with Kou Shibasaki (Battle Royale) and a later Korean remake of the movie starring Cha Tae-hyun (My Sassy Girl) and Song Hae-gyo (Endless Love.) Although both borrowed from the same source material, both movies approach the material in so very different ways. Don’t worry melodrama lovers, both are reasonably enjoyable.

Let’s start with the Japanese movie first. Crying out Love in the Center of the World (the title comes from the Harlan Ellison short story) is the story of Sakutaro, a man who comes back to his old hometown. He is going to get married to Ritsuko (Kou Shibasaki) but as something in his life seems incomplete. He seems to be searching for something elusive in his life: closure. After finding a bunch of cassette tapes in his old room, he begins to reminisce about the past and his first great love, Aki. As more of the plot unfolds we get to see how this girl changed his life.

The setting of the flashback scenes is Japan in the 1980s and the film does a decent job in portraying the era, the music and the sensibilities of the time (even old school Walkman players!) Add this to the great cinematography of the film, showing lush yet low key hues (lots of blue in there) in the present day scenes, and ordinary hues in the flashback scenes, yet often with a light-saturated feel, especially in the later scenes, evoking the pictures of, say, Shunji Iwai.

The theme of the movie dwells not only on how Sakutaro is striving to let go, but also how he is dealing with his fiancée with that context in mind. Compared with other Japanese Melodramas, the film fits in well. The mood of the film is somber, lacking the weirdness of some of its Japanese brothers, or the general wackiness or slapstick of its South Korean cousins. It is in this quiet that we feel the most emotion, the grief of a past love, the void left by one’s longing for someone, the experience of one’s first heartbreak. Many will find the pace slow, but this pace, in my opinion, is deliberate; as one’s emotional journeys are never fast.

The South Korean take of the movie, My Girl and I, is an entirely different take of the source material, although both films reproduce the same scenes. A number of big names were involved with the project; although Jeon Yun-su (who helmed the cinematic flop Yesterday) was directing, the touch of screenwriter Kwak Jae-young (famously known for directing My Sassy Girl, Windstruck among others) is definitely present. As stated before, the movie stars Cha Tae-hyun (My Sassy Girl) in the male lead, while Song Hae-gyo (best known in Korean Dramas in the first season of Endless Love) who give a good performance. May I also say that she’s quite gorgeous. Being in their twenties (I think) wearing school uniforms for high school students seem really weird to me (especially after seeing Cha Tae-hyun don one in My Sassy Girl.)

Kwak’s unique brand of situational/slapstick humor can be found early on in the movie; which is a common plot device in most Korean melodramas – soften em up before going in for the kill. When the tears do come, the movie will squeeze you for it with all it has.

With respect to mood, the movie feels much lighter than the quieter Japanese counterpart; whether this is a better interpretation or not is entirely on the viewer’s hands. We are introduced to the characters not through death (in the last film the first reminiscence scene was during a funeral) but by something else. The movie also cuts the fiancée subplot that was in the other film.

The theme of this movie is not as much focused on letting go as the Japanese adaptation; rather it is a fond, yet bittersweet reminiscence of a first love. There are still elements that do suggest Cha’s character as one seeking resolution, however, so it’s not entirely different. Thanks to its more conventional tone, it seems more accessible to the casual Asian romance fan than the other film.

In any case, love and life are both fleeting. Both movies teach us, or warn us to seize the day and treasure every precious memory you have to the fullest.