Lee Seong-gu's black-and-white melodrama When the Buckwheat Blooms is built around one distasteful event: After fabric peddler Heo (Park No-sik) falls in love-at-first-sight with Bun-i (Kim Ji-mee), he chances upon her nude-bathing, chases her down in a field, then rapes her...from the heart? For him, it's the beginning of a life-defining tragic romance; for her, it's the first in a series of sexual assaults that will plague her young womanhood as she's sold from boatsman to cattle rancher to pimp...then back again. That she longs for the father of her subsequent son doesn't seem like a lingering passion so much as a warped survival instinct shaped by the legacy of trauma. As for Heo, his years-long search for his victim impacts our sympathy for this "hero" because we know he'd try his best to provide her — and their child — without hustling her from man to man. No. It's not the Disney ideal!
But despite his best efforts to rescue his damsel in distress, as he runs from one end of the country to the other, his quest proves ultimately fruitless. By chance, however, he does reunite with two old friends — a snake oil salesman (Heo Chang-kang) and a paper dealer (Kim Hie-gab). These old pals of yesteryear are there to remind him that there are other loves in this life and that the fraternal bond is no less important than the familial or erotic one. Heck, When the Buckwheat Blooms even celebrates the affection between man and packmule. The break between Heo and his beast of burden is among the most tender scenes in the film. (Maybe he too is sold from one guy to the next!) But for me, it was nice to see a four-legged friend have his work and devotion acknowledged, too.
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