[HanCinema's Film Review] "Sunshine Love"

An everpresent sense of normalcy pervades "Sunshine Love". Neither slacker Gil-Ho (played by Oh Jung-se) nor career woman Jeong-Seok (Jo Eun-ji) are terribly attractive. They're not ugly, either, but for the most part they look like normal people who we could know personally. Their lives, as well, are relatively unremarkable, with him working perennially to try and take the civil service exam and she having a successful management career in a field selected largely at random. Even the jokes in this movie aren't super funny movie quality jokes, but rather the kinds of jokes people tell casually with their friends.

Advertisement

Their story does not contain any particularly dramatic plot points. Interestingly, the only reason they meet to begin with is because they have friends who have stumbled into a dramatic plot point. This is more relevant than it seems- the closest this movie gets to a conflict is Gil-Ho's ennui and lack of ambition. While his friend's story is largely out of focus, it's a noteworthy parallel in that he's decisively making choices that Gil-Ho is avoiding.

"Sunshine Love" is in the curious spot of not being cute enough for the comedy to overshadow everything else and yet Gil-Ho seems to be expecting that the basic cute nature of his relationship is enough for him to avoid the other problems in his life. Jeong-Seok is not a magical force that automatically makes his life better. He has to make a conscious decision to accept her opinions and do the actual difficult stuff himself.

This kind of negotiation is a very basic part of any healthy romantic relationship, but it's rarely portrayed on film because it lacks much dramatic or high concept potential. This represents "Sunshine Love"'s biggest problem. It's difficult to describe the movie in a way that makes it sound exciting. What reason can we really have, for example, to watch a movie that's about two normal people having a normal cute relationship then having normal relationship problems?

I think there's a subtlety in this movie that makes it worth watching in spite of the lack of excitement. There's a lot of lame excuses in "Sunshine Love", and it's easy to see how Gil-Ho has convinced himself that he's right from a logical standpoint, completely oblivious to the fact that his lack of ambition makes him a rather dull person and that he can't coast by on Jeong-Seok's prior romantic affections toward him indefinitely. There's a lot to empathize with in the situations of both characters as they ring really true to life.

Ironically, it's the more stylistic flourishes that fall a little flat. Toward the end some typical film cliches show up that, while believable, feel awkward given the movie's general real life feel. There's also a big thematic point made about the Galaxy Express train that kind of comes up out of nowhere- the movie really should have at least mentioned that the friends of the main characters are huge Galaxy Express nerds early on. Regardless, "Sunshine Love" is quality light filmmaking with few pretensions and an excellent sense of real-life romantic logic.

This review was written by William Schwartz as a part of HanCinema's PiFan (Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival) coverage.

"Sunshine Love" is directed by Cho Eun-Seong and features Oh Jung-se and Jo Eun-ji.