We are faced with a filmic gem:
Song Young Jun, 30 (Song Jae Ha) and Seo Joon Suk, 23 (Jo Hye Hoon) are a very happy gay couple despite living their love in secret. Both actors, who play their roles perfectly, are not afraid to show their naked torsos during the 65 minutes of the film and have explicit sex scenes, all achieved in an artistic way.
The young people decide to create a memory they never had in celebrating their 5th anniversary. They rent a room in a motel in Jongno (Seoul's popular gay neighborhood) to record their precious memory on a video camera.
Between a celebration cake, confidences, naked baths, sex and complicities, all in front of the camera in which they record themselves, the room is filled with the memories that unite them, like the day on the beach to which they promise. go back. Likewise, they vow to never change their love for each other.
However, there is a feeling in the air that today is going to be their last day.
On the one hand, the excellent performances, the control of the body and voice of the two actors to interpret the emotions, the direction, script and other technical elements of the film and, on the other, the viewer's refusal to accept the obvious, but All the signs of what will happen are cleverly shown: Joon Suk is reluctant to allow himself to be filmed from the first scene, the bathroom scene. He claims to be nervous, then worries that the video could be taken as pornography. Only your boyfriend's insistence will lead him to agree to participate in everything that will happen inside the room.
As Young Jun prepares to leave, Joon Suk is awake, but he pretends to sleep and doesn't want to say goodbye. It is evident that he knew in advance that the relationship would end, and of the existence of a prior agreement between the two that it would end in this way.
Young Jun will also ask “When did you hate me the most?”, to which Joon Suk will respond: “When you tell me 'we don't have a future', 'we should marry women' or 'the gay community in Korea hasn't changed'.” Young Jun will also confess that “there is a fantastic recording ready for you,” referring to the recorded video that he leaves for her to watch after he leaves.
In my opinion, not knowing how to appreciate the true emotions and feelings that the characters convey is the reason for the negative reviews and low ratings. The characters themselves, very subtly, are responsible for answering the reason why the film does not have an ending like the one we would like. The film makes a very intelligent, very subtle criticism of the discrimination that exists in South Korea against members of the LGBT+ community.
South Korea is a conservative country, with strong patriarchal and heteronormative traditions, where homosexuals have difficulty fitting into society. Coming out is still not welcomed in most conservative Korean families, who consider their children's homosexuality as something close to a crime.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in South Korea face legal challenges and discrimination not experienced by non-LGBT+ South Koreans. Same-sex sexual activity is legal, but Gay Marriage, Equal Marriage or Same-sex Marriage or other forms of legal partnership are not available to same-sex couples.
It's true: we would like a happy ending for the two young people, but reality prevailed. Young Jun leaves an envelope on the nightstand containing an invitation to his wedding to a woman. His destiny is decided by his family. Your destiny is determined by society. He doesn't have the strength to fight this and accepts not being happy and also making his boyfriend unhappy.
An ending, which would only be syrupy, melodramatic and unrealistic, perhaps bordering on the worst film productions, would have been for Young Jun to have rebelled against his family and society and not have abandoned his boyfriend. For a moment, before the end credits, I thought that they were not a couple, that Joon Suk was a prostitute (because of the envelope on the table I even speculated that it could be money) and they both pretended to be boyfriend and girlfriend for some reason. A happy ending, in this case, could be that the connection created between the two turns them into a couple. Young Jun would return to the room to confess to loving him and Joon Suk would claim that he also developed feelings for him during the hours they shared in the motel room.