Reality Bites
E.oni delivers a modern Korean dramedy about women and men being friends. Sit down, Harry and Sally.
Love in the Big City
Director: E.oni • Writer: Kim Na-deul, based on the novel by Park Sang-young
Starring: Kim Go-eun, Noh Sang-hyun, Jung Whee, Oh Dong-min
South Korea • 1hr 58mins
Opens Hong Kong Nov 21 • IIB
Grade: B+
If you’ve ever had a friend who you vowed to marry if you were both single by the time you reached “XX” years, Love in the Big City | 대도시의 사랑법 will speak to you (as long as you don’t confuse it with the identically titled TV series). Director Lee Eon-hee – or E.oni – has thrown down arguably the most recognisable… romance? Coming-of-age drama? Millennial angst dramedy? Buddy film? All of the above? Observational slice of life to come off Korean screens since Kim Do-young’s inflammatory (only for some, take a guess who got butt hurt) Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 back in 2019. Big City is unlikely to set off alarm bells among dudes upset by women calling them out on their shit, but who knows? There is an unsentimental, brutal honesty to the film that some may find jarring; I found it refreshing. Lee’s feminine touch is all over Big City, but not in the sense of flowers and kittens and Hallmark emotions. It’s clear-eyed and contemporary.
There’s not much to the story: Jae-hee (Kim Go-eun, Exhuma, fantastic) is what movies like to call a “free spirit”; a young woman who doesn’t understand everyone’s hang-ups, won’t abide by the rules and is therefore labelled “trouble.” Her bestie is Heung-soo (Noh Sang-hyun, Apple TV’s Pachinko), a fellow university student and maybe budding writer who happens to be a gay man. With a few tweaks to Park Sang-young’s source material, the two wind up roommates and holding each other’s proverbial hair back while they puke up the busted romances and identity crises of their twenties.
The BFF marriage pact begins
Lee burst onto the scene with her 2003 breakout romantic dramedy …ing, a clever spin on a tired romantic story, and in Big City she kinda sorta does the same thing. If your hackles raise at the prospect of wacky misunderstandings and bumblingly hilarious cover-ups when mom calls you’re well within your rights. Straight girl and her gay bestie living together? This film should be loaded with them. But Lee and screenwriter Kim Na-deul’s hackles probably raise too, so they manage to sidestep most of the cheese. That said, they start with archetypes. Jae-hee’s a free spirit, but she’s also one of those trusting types who falls in love easily and quickly. Heung-soo is a closet case. For Jae-hee that means she attaches herself to assholes who don’t want to piss off mommy or possessive abusers (Oh Dong-min). For Heung-soo, it means committing himself to a series of skin-deep hook-ups because the courage to come out persistently eludes him and it costs him a great boyfriend (Jung Whee).
The duo meets late one night in a bar district (I’d swear it was what Seoul people used to call Hooker Hill) when both are out carousing. Jae-hee steps out to grab a smoke – still a no-no for “good” Korean women – and catches Heung-soo making out with a dude. An important one. Busted. The next day in class rumours are flying, Jae-hee comes to Heung-soo’s rescue and a crime-less Bonnie and Clyde are born. The years go by and we follow Jae-hee and Heung-soo through various stages and milestones, and get a true sense of how close they’re growing despite Korea doing its best to beat the personality out of both. Mincing words is really not Lee’s thing, and she has thoughts on Korea’s casual sexual assault and domestic violence, sexism and homophobia.
There are several things that prevent Love in the Big City from feeling like an Afterschool Special, chief among them Kim and Noh’s dynamic and Lee’s astute direction. Kim is a star in the making, recalling the luminous Jeon Do-yeon early in her career and for her relatively fearless choices. Jeon got tagged with all manner of ridiculous and insulting labels for daring to act as woman doing her own thing, and Kim is picking up that baton. She makes Jae-hee a fully rounded, messy young woman with desires, fears, rage and defiant joy that you have to pull for. Noh may have the harder role given that his chiselled, stupidly symmetrical face could make it easy to slap him with a dumb beauty sticker. Fortunately he’s up to the task of giving Heung-soo the layers he needs to make him real without ever being a victim. Through it all, Lee never lets the characters or the material slip into maudlin, preachy or, worse, performative, and the pair absolutely sells their BFF status. There’s a happy ending, and when Jae-hee finds true love and Heung-soo finds his literary voice, Miss A’s “Bad Girl Good Girl” gets an overdue clarion call make-over.