Marriage is a Crazy Thing

Marriage is a Crazy Thing is a fantastic twist on the classic love story.

Jun-young (Kam Woo-seong) is a man in his early thirties who has seen his friends and younger brother get married but has yet to open himself to a serious relationship. Rather he is happy floating through life with little direction or ambition.

Yeon-hee (Eom Jeong-hwa) is girl approaching thirty who is desperate to find a suitable husband, but is looking for a match based on social and economic suitability rather than love.

They meet on a blind date and quickly find that they are incompatible intellectually, but have an instant physical and emotional connection. Both are extremely practically minded, and as such decide to explore each other by starting a casual physical relationship, while she continues looking for more suitable husband and he avoids commitment.

This is a very modern tale, which is romantic, dramatic, smart, sexy and realistic. Turning the romance genre on it's head, and showing what dating is really like for modern thirty-somethings, who have emotional baggage, preconceived ideals and expectations, and too much self-interest to open themselves up to the possibility of a deeper kind of love.

Brilliantly written, excellently performed, smartly directed. If you think that Marriage really is a Crazy Thing then you will more than likely find a lot to love within this film.

Marriage Is a Crazy Thing is poet-become-director Yu Ha's second feature, starring Corean pop star Uhm Jung Hwa, now a veteran in the pop scene.

Yu, who also wrote the screenplay, crafts a story about a man, Junyoung, and a woman, Yeonhee, who meet on a blind date and begin a love affair, which only becomes complicated when she gets married. While I think many that watch this film will see a film about a woman who gets to "have her cake and eat it too", in terms of marrying for money and having a lover on the side (see the Eagles song, "Lying Eyes"), the protagonist is actually the man and I read it as a story about a guy who's both too stupid and cynical to understand this woman that he's become attached to.

The film features many cute moments, including times where the two pose as newlyweds or a married couple, which only seems to spike the irony in my mind that the main character doesn't seem to get. And so it appears to be a sort of tragedy and I read it as such. The photography is modern, clean and with a few touches of flourish in an otherwise classical style. The acting is believable and the story is interesting, but not quite engrossing. There are also a few lovemaking scenes with explicit dialog and a very mildly kinky twist.

I think I was most impressed with how neat the entire package is, from a well drafted story, to developed characters, all the visual and audio elements well put together and a rather interesting message that, I feel, is subtle enough that not everyone might get it. As such, I have to say that this was surprisingly enjoyable to watch and left me with a few things to think about as well, as I reach the upper years of my 20s, getting ready to step into the 30s that the principles live in. Recommendable (to mature audiences, of course). 8/10.

Starts of as an ordinary South Korean romantic drama then took turn into something that is close to films like Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached but then showed that it is much more than any of that. The similarities to the mentioned films stay only in the outline of the film as the difference in culture plays a big part there. It avoided the complexities of infidelity and showed the melancholic happiness that is found by the confused people who can't act above what the society is forcing upon them. The emotions are conveyed very subtly while the trivial events and the intimacy is portrayed in a straightforward manner without too much manipulation. The director being a former poet seem to understand exactly how to deal with real emotions.

Part of an accidental trilogy I created on somewhat strange "love" stories (this along with "Asako I and II" and "Meet Cute").

This film feels like a sort of straw-man argument against the monogamous constraints of human relationships. It reminded me of youthful discussions and/or indiscretions; indeed one of the two extremely attractive leads is a college professor. He comes complete with a swooning coed throwing herself at him. Is he 30 going on 19?

Instead our inveterate bachelor becomes a kept man to his lover whose contractual marriage then pays for their little love flat. While this arrangement I suppose is to show a sort of "true love" in the "s/he just gets me" mode, it felt like innocents playing house. And like a relationship stuck in the infatuation mode.

Anyways, the film may or may not work as a date movie. It sort of let's the viewer's heart and mind race against each other, and perhaps their loins quiver (actually pretty well done soft erotica).

The frisson of infatuation is definitely intoxicating, and the idea of an affair as a secret island for two to share, or in this room with a view, there's a lot of energy to be tapped from that. The allure of making love for hours versus trying to make a marriage over decades, here the former wins a bit too easily.

If marriages were as easy as flings, or as intensely enjoyable....that would be a crazy, and wonderful, thing. We could all be much older, but going on 19...

I always dug the title of an old Sonic Youth album "Confusion is Sex" - marriage might be crazy, but I think it strives to bring clarity to our short chaotic existence.

Hip hip hurray! Quite a number of modern Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese women should feel pretty happy after seeing the retributive act of Yeon-hee to "men". She fulfils many women's wishes of money and sex, though not from one body but two (or even more if one dares ^-^): getting hold of her doctor husband's money, social status and the sexual satisfaction with Joon-young, in addition, without being noticed or caught.

Though achieving better economy and international status, South Korea is basically a patriarchal, Confucius and conservative society where every family tries hard to keep everything in harmony, no matter true harmony or artificial. In general, women still don't have many to choose for their life, to have a "capable" (money + well-respected job like medical doctor or lawyer, and so that's why Joon-young is the odd man out on Yeon-hee's marriageable-men list) husband henceforth a stable family is still the ultimate destination of their life (even though it is already 21st century today and the tenth planet has been discovered in the Solar System we are living in). Many Korean women struggle to tolerate their husbands' affairs, no matter that's long or short term fun because financially they maybe depend on their husband to have a better or even luxurious life, or they just don't want to lose face even the marriage has become nominal. Seeing Yeon-hee's devilish but "elegant" machinations, the repressed women may give their cheer and applause.

The wedding at the beginning is a telling symbol that "marriage" is the pillar shoring up the society and human relationship. People still holds the thought that the elder in the family should be married off before the other younger ones. Joon-young somehow is true to himself, he doesn't want to commit to something he doesn't believe, unlike his brother, who is getting married with his fiancée and struggling painfully to keep the dangerous fire burning with his old flame. Hypocrite!

Hormone ignites the libido but heart searches for truth. While the campus hunk is in perplexity and her nerd hubby in the dark, she is the one who has the last laugh. Every play has its ending, happy or not. Joon-young needs to think about the ending with this merry wife of another man.

Even since the Korean TV soap opera "Autumn in my heart" ("Gaeul donghwa") invaded Hong Kong in 2000, people here suddenly got crazy about the Korean pop culture: TV, electronic games and thousands and hundred of movies. You can see that many Korean movies on show in town but not other places. If Korean movies can reach the international stage, some credits should be given to Hong Kong film-makers, for sure, anyway.

A good light entertainment for a Saturday afternoon, it just cost me US$0.13 to rent, what more can I ask for?

Oh, by the way, I am eager to know how Germaine Greer views this movie.