[HanCinema's Film Review] "Salut D'Amour"

Seong-chil (played by Park Geun-hyung) is a grumpy old man who's stubbornly standing in the way of a redevelopment scheme for his local neighborhood. The other characters decide, somewhat elaborately, that the best way to get Seong-chil to fold is to develop a convoluted romantic storyline involving Geum-nim (played by Youn Yuh-jung). And so, we get a love story involving Seong-chil and Geum-nim.

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At least that's what I thought was going to happen. "Salut D'Amour", having established the basics of its plot, quickly decides to spend as little time on the relationship between Seong-chil and Geum-nim as possible. For all practical intents and purposes their love story is just a montage that goes over the bullet points of the romantic comedy genre without actually giving Park Geun-hyung and Youn Yuh-jung time to develop a convincing romantic rapport.

Given that this movie is nearly two hours long, you might be wondering what exactly happens during all that time. Well let's see...a couple of teenagers argue over their dedication to saving the whales. Another character tries to quit smoking. Another character just pesters Seong-chil at regular intervals. Another character makes ineffectual romantic advances. There's a fight scene involving pressure points of all things. I think that was supposed to be a joke. I'm not really sure.

What do all of these have in common..? Well, nothing really. "Salut D'Amour" is loaded with plot, but almost none of it is relevant to anything. Even the redevelopment storyline, which seems really essential to the motivations of every character who's not Seong-chil, ends up ultimately being irrelevant. Seriously- the characters could have been trying to hook Seong-chil up with Geum-nim just to try and fix up his grouchy mood, or just because they wanted to play matchmaker. That would have been a much more plausible, compelling motivation that would have freed up a lot more space for the actual romance. Especially in the context of the plot twist.

No I'm not telling you what the plot twist is- it's the main compelling part of the movie. The ending is painful enough to be genuinely tear-inducing- or at least it would be except that all the extraneous plot has mostly obfuscated the nature of these character relationships. Had Seong-chil and Geum-nim been spending more actual time with each other I might have actually guessed it by the end, which would have had a much more powerful emotional impact.

Instead, we're left with a story that the plot twist actually renders mostly nonsensical. That doctor really needs to lose his medical license, because I'm pretty sure that's not how these situations are supposed to be handled. It's a complaint I probably would not have bothered with if that blasted redevelopment storyline hadn't begged so many questions about legal guardianship and why this shouldn't have even been an issue at all.

As a relevant afterthought, "Salut D'Amour" was based on Lovely, Still, an American independent film. I haven't seen that one, so I can't recommend it. Even so, the basic concept of the movie is strong enough that the American original might conceivably be worth watching. But strength of concept notwithstanding, "Salut D'Amour" is not a good or fun movie, and should be avoided.

Review by William Schwartz

"Salut D'Amour" is directed by Kang Je-gyu and features Park Geun-hyung, Youn Yuh-jung, Cho Jin-woong, Han Ji-min, Kim Jung-tae, Hwang Woo-seul-hye and Lee Joon-hyuk-I.