Il Mare (2000) - Korean Movie Review

 -May contain major spoilers-

Il Mare (시월애) is a Korean romantic film directed by Lee Hyun-Seung and released on September 9, 2000, starring Jun Ji-Hyun and Lee Jung-Jae.

Summary

On December 21, 1999 Kim Eun-Joo (Jun Ji-Hyun), a voice actress, is moving out of her house. Before leaving, she puts a Christmas card in the mailbox for the next owner asking them to forward the mail to her new apartment. 

Han Sung-Hyun (Lee Jung-Jae), an architect who works as a construction worker, moves into the house and decides to name it "Il Mare" (The Sea in Italian). He reads the card that Eun-Joo put in the mailbox, who also wrote that there were paw prints on the house entrance, but there were none, so he asks in a neighboring store if there were any previous tenants but they tell him that his aunt finished the construction of the house 1 month ago. (How mysterious...) A dog appears in front of Sung-Hyun's house and he decides to adopt it. While he was outside the house, he accidentally spilled paint and the dog ran towards the house leaving paw prints all over the entrance. Sung-Hyun decides to reply to the card.

Eun-Joo goes to visit the house again and receives a reply letter from Sung-Hyun dated December 28, 1997. Eun-Joo is incredulous at first and so is Sung-Hyun, but they begin to exchange letters where Eun-Joo "predicts" what is going to happen (like the flu that made many people sick at the start of 1998) and Sung-Hyun helps Eun-Joo find her favorite voice recorder that she had lost in the past.

Slowly, as they send more letters, they seem to start to fall in love with each other...

Thoughts 

Il Mare is such a great movie to watch around Christmas time and, although a bit "old", it feels timeless. The pace of the movie in the first few minutes feels slow, but it picks up a great pace after the characters start to exchange their letters.

The cinematography of this movie is fantastic and is very aesthetically pleasing. The movie has great shots like the one where the camera follows the POV of the dog as he meets Sung-Hyun for the first time.

The acting is really good. Jun Ji-Hyun does a good job portraying Eun-Joo and you can tell that even if it was one of her first roles (before she became super popular with My Sassy Girl the following year) she was going to be a star. Lee Jung-Jae also does a great job playing Sung-Hyun, you can clearly see his feelings towards Eun-Joo and you can also feel the internal conflict that it generates in him (after all, they are in different years...) 

The soundtrack goes great with the movie, the Main Theme feels very melancholic and so does the song Must Say Goodbye by Kim Hyun-Chul. A great music moment in this movie is the scene where they cook pasta and this song plays in the background. 

This movie is in my top 3 "list of movies to watch around Christmas time" (First is The Shop Around the Corner (1940) with James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan and second is While You Were Sleeping (1995) with Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman [Review]) I love watching winter movies even though it is currently summer in my country. 

I recommend this movie if you like romantic movies that give a somewhat nostalgic feeling and if you like movies that contain themes about time-traveling (like Orange [Review]).

By the way that mailbox is the most gorgeous mailbox I have ever seen in my life.

Rating

Acting - 10/10

Plot - 10/10

Romance - 9/10

OST - 10/10

Cinematography - 10/10

Overall Rating - 10/10

Extended Movie Info

Run Time: 96 minutes (1h 36min).

Release Date: September 9, 2000.

Directed by: Lee Hyun-Seung.

Cinematography by: Hong Kyung-Pyo.

Screenplay by: Yeo Ji-Na, Kim Eun-Jung, Kim Mi-Yeong Won Tae-Yeon.

Edited by: Lee Eun-Soo.

Music by: Kim Hyun-Chul.

Starring: Jun Ji-Hyun and Lee Jung-Jae.

P.S. I just can't leave this review without commenting on The Lake House starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves which was released in 2006 and is a remake of this movie. I did watch that movie after reading someone writing that "it was better because the characters kiss" and I was just curious about the HOW!!?? I think that is a bad remake and it sort of breaks the "morality" of that version of Eun-Joo (named Kate in this movie) *SPOILERS* In the remake the characters meet and kiss while Kate is dating who would be her ex-boyfriend in the "present" timeline (Sung-Hyun would never do that) *SPOILER ENDS* The only thing I liked of the remake was the design of the titular house.