As "Wall to Wall" (2025 release from South Korea; 118 min.; original title "84 m2") opens, we are in "Seoul 2021" and as we watch Seoul's endless sea of skyscrapers, Noh Woo-sung purchases a small condo measuring 84 square meters (900 sqaure feet). We the go to "Seoul, August 2024" and Woo-sung struggles to keep up with his mortgage, maintenance fees and other expenses. On top of that, he notices strange noises coming from his neighbor below. Or is it his neighbor upstairs? At this point we are 10 minutes into the movie.
Couple of comments: houses, condos and apartments in Asia are typically a lot smaller than what we are used to in the West, and certainly in the US, where there is never-ending space everywhere except a few major cities like New York and Chicago. This South Korean movie starts out as your typical drama: how to deal with noise pollution presumably coming from your neighbors. But the movie morphs into something quite different in its second hour. This movie is super plot-heavy so the less about that, the better and I won't spoil any of it. I quite enjoyed the second half of the movie, more so than the first half. The non-names cast (for me anyway) does quite well. And of course Seoul, itself a character in the movie, is an amazing place.
"Wall to Wall" started streaming in Netflix about a week ago. I happen to read a positive review of it in the British weekly The Economist, and that was good enough for me to check it out. The movie is currently rated 62% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and that sounds about right to me. If you are in the mood for a foreign drama/thriller about life in a small condo set in a skyscraper, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.
