January 4, 2021

Forever With You: Two Men, Two Women, Innumerable Problems

It takes a certain level of confidence to start a film off with an extended take of three children silently building a dirt fort outside a prison. (Not even credits are happening!) It takes an even greater boldness to have a handful of adults exaggeratedly act like children in a series of flashbacks for the first quarter of your movie. But anyone who's seen Stray Bullet is bound to come to Forever With You with the belief that director Yoo Hyun-mok's risky choices will deliver a pay off. They're not wrong. Forever With You fairly teems with stageworthy compositions and an overall sense of mystery. If it's no Aimless Bullet, it's surely a stepping stone to get there.

An earlier flick in Yoo's oeuvre, Forever With You is more moody melodrama than tragic thriller: Its two adjoining love triangles feature a harmonica-playing gangster (Choi Bong), a shopgirl-turned-mob-wife (Do Kum-bong), a shady businesswoman (actor unknown), and a pitiable exconvict (Lee Yong) who in five packed days will discover that the world has largely left him behind after ten years in the slammer. (Although there is that matter of paternity regarding one nine-year-old girl...)

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