Delayed Reaction: Right Now, Wrong Then

Premise: The same chance meeting of two strangers plays out in full, twice.

 

This is a gimmick movie and I'm all about it. The idea is pretty basic. It's Before Sunrise but twice. The first hour is this director (Jung Jae-young) and artist (Kim Min-hee) meeting and spending the day together. The second hour is the exact same scenario with small initial differences that lead to a vastly different result. It's not quite a Rashomon, but it's close. This is a very effective idea. The first meeting I wasn't that into, but when it got to the second version, I appreciated all the small changes that led to vastly different results by the end. The first meeting was more guarded. Jung Jae-young was putting on a show. On the surface, it looked like the more appealing presentation. He raves about her art (using lines he recycled in past interviews) and doesn't risk ruining it all by mentioning that he's married. It eventually blows up on him. The second meeting, he gives honest criticism of her art and admits that he's married early. That ends up forming a stronger bond, so even after the bizarre scene in which he drunkenly strips in front of her friends, she is more willing to forgive it.

 

This is an idea that I would love to see used for an English movie. And this isn't just a "I hate reading subtitles" complaint. There are certain kinds of movies that play better in the tongue they were written in. I didn't buy a lot of the dialogue in this movie. It was clumsy and rushed. I suspect a lot of it has to do with the ability to translate the conversation and appreciate the delivery of the lines. It's the same reasoning why I wouldn't expect the Before movies to work as well for non-English speakers.

 

Similarly, I really disliked the lead performances. Neither did anything for me. It's clear there was some amount of improv to their scenes, and they did not feel natural at all. I could almost see them thinking about which talking point they're supposed to hit next. To be fair though, maybe I'm just not conditioned to how casual dialogue sounds and looks in Korean. I haven't seen much Korean cinema, so I'm not at all familiar with those rhythms.

 

The central conceit of the movie is so effective that even though most other aspects either didn't work or didn't quite translate, I still appreciated the movie overall.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend