Bae Yong Joon - Love needs no reason

French reviews of April Snow

For me, there are some enigmas which will remain forever as cosmic mysteries. First of all, the mystery of divine creation and the Korean cinema. Frankly, Korea, with their opening towards the occident, and above all their cinema. Their industry comes from quite nowhere. And there, paf. Slap on slap.
But WHERE do they find the FORCE to produce movies like that. There is always a Korean movie among my favourite every year. Even More. For example April Snow. A romance in French term. A man and a woman who meet at the hospital. Their spouses are in a serious condition. Ah and icing on the cake, they betrayed them both. Our two cuckolds will be irremediably attracted to each other.
The script? Melodrama. Nothing to make the extraordinary one. But the accomplishment. The delicacy. Touching shots from the camera. The refinement of final work.
The perfection of the resplendent couple, both beautiful like gods, filmed with what it takes of implication, sobriety and tenderness.
HOW do they Make, these Korean?!

Thanks to kamui for the drawing.


From French movie portal Ciné-zoom
http://www.cine-zoom.com/article2542.html
translated from french to english by camille

Une histoire simple, à la fois triste, émouvante et éprouvante grâce à un magnifique jeu des acteurs, les dialogues étant très limités. Ils arrivent à faire passer les émotions voulues avec réalisme et sensibilité. La musique accompagne parfaitement cette histoire en accentuant les émotions.
Thierry Vaslot

A simple story, at the same time sad, moving and tough thanks to the splendid acting of the actors, as the dialogues are very limited. They manage to give realism and sensibility to the emotions. The music goes along perfectly with this story by emphasizing emotions.
by Thierry Vaslot

Une magnifique histoire d’amour sur la découverte de l’autre et des blessures occasionnées qui rapprochent deux êtres meurtris. Un amour improbable et impossible, qui ne fera que passer, mais que l’on n’oubliera jamais. De beaux personnages, magnifiquement interprétés. Un film sensible et plein de sentiments, qui tirera quelques larmes aux plus romantiques.
Gérard Chargé

A wonderful love story about the discovery of the other and the occurred wounds which bring closer two hurt persons. An improbable and impossible love, which will just go by, but which we will never forget. Beautiful characters, played wonderfully. A sensitive movie full of feelings, which will get some tears from the most romantic people.
by Gérard Chargé


From French movie portal Avisciné by CM
http://www.aviscine.org/critique/lire.php?t=772
translated from french to english by camille

Both of them and a couple.

A sober melodrama ? Yes, if it is Korean. It’s a chance, “April Snow” is made by Jin-Ho Hur

Perhaps do you remember of Random Heart (in French L’ombre d’un soupcon) realized sometime ago by Sidney Pollack and in which Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas having just lost their respective spouse in an air crash and who did not know each other, realized, that their spouses were intimately closed. April Snow takes the same way. Seo-Young (Ye-jin Son, already noticed in the splendid Ivre de femmes et de peinture) waits at the emergency: her husband had a car accident. It is there that In-su (Yong-joon Bae) arrives, the husband of the other passenger, also in the coma. Both do not know each other but their respective spouses maintained an extra-marital relation since a long time. Between the two survivors, between decency and a minimal approach, a difficult relation will be established at the same time. The reference to Pollack’s movie finishes there. Because the over-sentimental which weighed the Hollywood movie is not setting in Korean Jin-Ho Hur’s cinema. Less artificial than Kim Ki-duk or Hong Sangsoo, the directors of his generation, Jin-Ho Hur always knew how to show this soothe naturalism, quite contemplative (we remember of Christmas in August) which marks his cinema. Here he still goes along with decency and reserve, making the “calm-mornings” of his country a kind of intimate philosophy.

April Snow is a movie with a great sobriety, as in its psychological approach (culturally centred on the Asian culture) than in its bias of directing. The bragging does not have its place and, inside the setting, with the evolution of the relation, the bodies, shrivelled up at the beginning, seem to unfold, to untie just like the words, like the smiles which will slowly come to light up the faces.

And if April Snow, in its final scenes, gets started lightly on a more conventional melodrama, it is more for going, at the end, to this elsewhere of possible (like snow in April). Then we think about other authors : Kawabata in the narration and on the ultimate images of Millenium Mambo of Hou Hsiao Hsien.

To be continued

posted by Toujours_BYJ @ 5/19/2006 08:36:00 AM