Jo Hyun Jae

The movie title is a paradox in itself. “My wife” is the woman a man is married to. How can his wife “get married”? Well, she does (in the movie.) Son Ye-Jin plays an attractive young woman In-Ah, perfectly normal on the outside, but harbouring abnormal desires in her heart. She is a free spirit and a great football (soccer) fan, and she evaluates her relationships with men in football terms.

The very average-looking actor Kim Joo-Hyuk who plays her boyfriend Deok-Hoon looks familiar, but I’m not able to place him until halfway through the movie. Kim Joo-Hyuk is the lead actor in “Lovers in Prague”. Having been spoilt by our Mr. Jo, I find actors with small eyes unappealing. But what I find it hard to stomach is this man (and a policeman at that) crying like a baby to his lover (whom he thinks he is about to lose): “I can’t live without you!” (more than once!) Come on, men don’t cry. (unless you can cry as beautifully as Andrea.)

To go back to “My wife got maried”, the Son Ye-Jin character In-Ah is not ready to settle down, but she agrees to marry Kim after he agrees not to interfere with her “night” life. (She goes out “drinking” every night, sometimes not returning home till the wee hours.) And then her work takes her somewhere else, so that she can only return home on weekends. You can guess what happens next, right? She meets somebody else? Right! She wants a divorce? Wrong! She wants to marry this other man WITHOUT divorcing her husband. She wants to be married to TWO men! She says in some African tribes women have multiple mates. Her husband says in anguish (and I pity Kim here, but not in “Lovers in Prague”): “Why do you have to tell me? Why don’t you just have an affair behind my back?” Her answer: “I don’t want to lie to you.”

She does marry the other man who is played by Joo Sang-Wook (the 5th man, the rich guy, in “3 Dads/1 Mom”.) And then she has a baby girl — who’s the father? Echoes of “3 Dads/1 Mom”. And the baby has a first birthday party (actually two birthday parties, with each Dad and family) — nowhere near as moving as that of Ha Seon in “3 Dads/1 Mom”. There’s a big row, and mother and daughter disappear (again echoes of “3 Dads/1 Mom”.) The ending is a fantasy reunion of all four of them — mother, daughter, and the two fathers — caught up in football mania in Spain (watching Real Madrid, I think.)

This reminds me of the ending of “Sunshine” — Yeon Woo, Eun Sup, Min Ho, and Yeon Woo’s younger sister frolicking on the beach — one big happy family. If it works for “My wife got married”, why not for “Sunshine”? Threesome seems to be the latest craze in Korean movies. The female protagonist in “The Naked Kitchen” also wants BOTH her husband and her lover. (Please see our 6/19/09 post “Random Thoughts”.)

The ending of “Sunshine” casts a shadow over a drama that is otherwise light and airy. Yeon Woo cannot marry Eun Sup because his father kills her father (even though it transpires he’s not the real murderer.) She cannot reject Min Ho because she does not want to hurt him. Notice love doesn’t enter the equation: she loves Eun Sup but not Min Ho (not the way a woman loves a man anyway.) So “Sunshine” has an open ending — the drama deliberately avoids solving this problem of the eternal triangle. I have one solution, though: let Eun Sup pair up with Yeon Woo’s kid sister who has said when she grows up, she’ll marry him. She knows a good man when she sees one. She’s quite precocious; she’ll be a grown woman in no time.

Korean TV dramas are usually very conservative and demure where relationships between the sexes are concerned. But Korean movies can be pretty avant-garde in both theme (as in these two movies mentioned here) and execution — there are quite a few steamy sex scenes in “My wife got married.”

Son Ye-Jin won several awards for her performance in this movie:

Her 2003 movie “The Classic” is one of my favourite Korean movies. She is the actress that I would like to star in JHJ’s comeback drama in late 2010 (after his discharge from the army.) Even though she is also in “Great Ambition” (Dae Mang), I don’t remember JHJ and her in any scene together. I think they will make a great couple and generate good chemistry.

Maria’s answer to Shirley

I love all of Jo Hyun-Jae’s dramas, especially “Sunshine” — it is light and bright: “light” as the opposite of “heavy” and “bright” as the opposite of “dark”. I know, I know, it has the standard fare of the sins of the fathers visited upon the children. But in spite of everything, the overall mood is joyous and “sunshiny”, thanks in no small part to the JHJ character Jung Eun Sup.

Eun Sup is not perfect (apart from his looks.) He has many weaknesses (but lasciviousness is NOT one of them):
- he’s immature — In Paris he’s involved in a relationship with an older woman who treats him like a spoilt child.
- he’s impulsive — He flies from Paris to Seoul to try to stop his girlfriend from marrying someone else.
- he’s selfish — At the beginning he only cares about himself and his own happiness.
- he’s self-indulgent — He does whatever pleases him, regardless of consequences for other people.

I do not believe Eun Sup means to take advantage of Yeon Woo (played by Song Hye Kyo.) There is no need to. If he makes a move, she will not resist. JHJ in a pastry chef uniform is so drop-dead gorgeous that no woman can resist him.

Yes, Eun Sup has just been jilted by his former girlfriend, and for Yeon Woo to catch him on the rebound is not unusual. And don’t forget Yeon Woo is younger and prettier than the other woman. Eun Sup thinks he loves his former girlfriend, but it soon becomes obvious that the attraction is superficial and physical. So it’s not as if he sees one, loves one, see another, loves another.

The most moving performance in the whole of “Sunshine” occurs in Episode 9, when Yeon Woo declares her love for Eun Sup to Min Ho (overheard by Eun Sup, as it is.) Min Ho says: “What do you know about love?” And Yeon Woo replies: “No? Then what do you call this heartache whenever I think about him? For the first time since I was born, in all my 26 years, I feel something stuffed in my heart. I feel I’m about to explode. I cannot breathe. However unhappy I am, just looking at his face makes me feel blessed. What do you call this? Is this not love?” and “Why can’t I feel this way? Is it because I’m an orphan? Is it because I have no education, no money, no ability? I can feel. I know what heartache is.”

I am thoroughly convinced Yeon Woo loves Eun Sup. The fact that she has only known him for a few weeks is beside the point. That’s how love is! Yeon Woo has known Min Ho all her life and she does not love him the way she loves Eun Sup. What she feels for Min Ho is affection but not love. If she really loves Min Ho, there would be no way Eun Sup could squeeze himself in. Something that Han Yi Joon says in “Only You” applies here. Remember that scene when the four of them are having a night snack at his restaurant? Actually Han and Eun Jae are having an intimate soiree and Soo Yeon (#2 female) and Hyun Sung (#2 male) crash the party. Han says to Hyun Sung: “If you’ve known someone for 16 years and are still just friends, you’re going to remain friends forever, that’s all.” Han is very arrogant but he is right. Eun Jae and Hyun Sung can never develop beyond the “good friends” stage. Same with Yeon Woo and Min Ho in “Sunshine”. He may love her, but if she has not fallen in love with him in all these years, it is highly unlikely she will after she meets Eun Sup.

The sweetest part of “Sunshine” is when Eun Sup and Yeon Woo are in the first flush of love, when neither is sure it is love. The scene when he buys her the hair clip and when he puts it on for her, and a scene on a bus when Eun Sup wipes away some lipstick for Yeon Woo who has put on some make-up for him and he tells her she looks more beautiful without, and another scene on the bus home (after Yeon Woo’s declaration of love), when the driver hits the brakes and they both (sitting at the back of the bus) jerk forward, Eun Sup protectively puts out his arm and halts Yeon Woo’s forward motion — would all these be regarded as “touchy-feely”? I do not see this as an “invasion of personal space” at all. After all, Eun Sup has lived in Europe for a number of years, so he probably doesn’t pay much heed to protocol, unlike a traditional Korean male. Holding Yeon Woo’s hand from behind to teach her how to whip cream is perfectly natural. He has to show her exactly how to use “force”. Before that he teaches her how to wear her uniform and rolls up her sleeve. I do not sense any resentment in Yeon Woo at all.

The second half of “Sunshine” falls into the standard pattern of Korean drama. Yeon Woo discovers Eun Sup’s father is the one who “kills” her father. (As it turns out, he is not the real murderer.) Love goes out the window and ambivalent feelings set in. She cannot hate him because it is not really his fault, but she cannot love him anymore. But instead of telling him the reason, she suffers in silence and makes him suffer too. Then she goes flip-flopping. She wavers between Eun Sup and Min Ho, driving both crazy. I think her conduct here is unforgivable. I can accept that she can no longer accept Eun Sup, but to give Min Ho hope when she knows she can never love him is callous. There is nothing in love that says the one who comes first has priority. In “Sunshine”, the problem lies with the previous generation — the crimes of the father visited upon the children. So if the premise is reconciliation is impossible (at least that is Yeon Woo’s attitude), then the second half is just running rings around the actors. I find the second half tedious.

The real weakness of “Sunshine” lies in the ending. All accounts point to JHJ’s role is originally the supporting one (the other guy who plays Kim Min Ho is the lead.) But when the drama starts on TV, Korean viewers swamp the SBS website with praise of JHJ. Ever responsive to the audience, SBS expands JHJ’s role. But I guess they cannot possibly relegate the #1 male Rye Seong Beom to a subsidiary role. (Rumour has it Rye’s brother is a director, maybe even a friend of the director of “Sunshine”.) Hence the director/scriptwriter in their unfathomable wisdom conceive of this perfect way to end the drama — a threesome. They cannot let Eun Sup and Yeon Woo come together. They cannot very well make Yeon Woo and Min Ho a couple. So they devise this “everybody lives together happily ever after” ending which pleases no one, least of all JHJ fans.

Shirley has a pet peeve.

If my memory serves me right, in Episode 6, Eun Sup had only known Yeon Woo for about 10 days. And what a 10-days it was! In those 10 days, Eun Sup was ruthlessly dumped by his former lover and had to stay with some total strangers just to hide from his own estranged father. He also lost his passport and could not go back home. It was rather amazing that he was not in a state of “mental wreckage”, having gone through all these in such short period. A mere 10 days would be too short for one to recover from the pain of loss after a long-term relationship, let alone start to pursue a new one. At least that is my humble opinion.

But to my surprise, in the middle of Episode 6, Eun Sup started to comment on the relationship between Yeon Woo and Min Ho, which I took as a sign of showing interest in the leading lady. Eun Sup was then a half stranger to Yeon Woo’s family which kindly took him in. And along the way, Yeon Woo had secretly developed some feelings for him . But he didn’t know anything about it. He was expected to leave soon, after gathering all the necessary travel documents. He was also aware of Min Ho’s love for Yeon Woo and sensed the reluctance on Yeon Woo’s part. I think he should not have made such a comment. By all means, one’s personal feelings is something, just like it is called, quite personal. That means now he had set his eyes on Yeon Woo? In that case, how should I label a charactor who can so easily forget and then quickly fall in love again (even if the girl was quite unusual and had remarkable qualities)? I know I would not use the word “solid” here. (By the day, he reminded me of Jung Woo Jin in “Love Letter”, who knowingly wedged himself between Andrea and Eun Ha. I don’t blame him for loving Eun Ha, but I detest what he did to the relationship between her and Andrea.)

Then a few minutes later, Eun Sup made an excuse and tried to get so close to Yeon Woo that eventually he forced her to stand up and leave the table. Eun Sup sensed her uneasiness but asked her why she couldn’t bear to be so close to him, but would allow Min Ho to do that. OK, this time he found himself an excuse, that he was seeking friendship. Even if I could accept it at face value, I found it a bit bogus. Aren’t we all yearning for true, trustworthy, long-lasting friendship? But we don’t really go asking to have a 10-day acquaintance substitute for a twenty-year long friendship. It is not possible. And “Thou ought not invade other people’s personal space” would be Social Etiquette 101. I don’t really expect a well-bred Korean-born Frenchman to do such a thing.

In Episode 7, both Eun Sup and Yeon Woo started to work for Soo Ah, who was Eun Sup’s ex-girlfriend. One day, Soo Ah told them that the cake made by Eun Sup was highly praised by the financial backer she was seeking for, and encouraged them to make an even better one that could meet the financier’s specific needs. Of course they congratulated themselves for the achievement. Eun Sup was so happy that he put his hand on top of the girl’s and would not let go of it. I was still puzzled with this when the final blow came.

Actually, there was a very sweet and sad moment in that part of the drama. Watching Eun Sup sifting the powdery ingredient for the cake reminded Yeon Woo of her father. She had flashbacks of her father working and smiling at her in her mind. She was too lost in her memory to notice that Eun Sup was waving at her all this time. Coming back to real life, Yeon Woo found out that Eun Sup was asking her about how she was doing on the cream. Then Eun Sup tried to show her how to correctly use the whisker. OK, to all the girls out there, if a man wants to show you how to properly make whipping cream, in which way would you expect him to do it？Normally, one would expect that person just to pick up the whisker and whisk away. Or maybe hold your hand if you know each other very well. To have someone wrap you in his arms and show you how to do it? Mm, you tell me who that person could be. But that was exactly what Eun Sup did to “show” Yeon Woo the correct way of making whipping cream. To me, that was the bottom line.

Playwrights can portray the unspoken attraction between two characters in very beautiful ways. When the affection is secretly broiling under the placid surface, the emotions are very delicate and beautiful. It is better to let actors’ eyes and expressions do the work. Witty and interesting conversation definitely helps. The characters should adhere to the “hands-off” policy (if there is such a policy, but you know what I mean) until later when the time is right, in my opinion. In this drama, the lead male character was never touchy-feely to the leading lady. That means the scriptwriter knows how to make a character respectful. So to have Eun Sup behave in this Casanova fashion, the purpose was to instill some kind of imperfection in the second leading male character, I would have guessed. I was not sure which direction this character of Eun Sup was heading towards. To avoid more of such scenes or other “evil” traits that the second leading man normally must possess in order to make the first leading man more attractive, I did all a viewer could do when facing unwanted scenes — stopped watching. I did just that.

(Since then, I learnt from other viewers that our prince had gracefully bowed out of the tangled relationship and there was no more “evil” spirit other than what I have felt dumped on his character. But I still don’t have the heart to pick up from where I have left. Maybe some other time.)