Do not be fooled by the title: Perhaps Love is not your typical rom-com. In fact, it is not a rom-com at all. This emotionally honest, amusing screwball comedy offers us different angles on what love is and what it can be, more in line with the Greek differentiations of the concept.

The most interesting part of Perhaps Love – and what holds the film together – are the tangled relationships between its many characters and their subplots. Multiple gears are in motion here. Kim Hyun (Ryu Seung-ryong) is a one-time best-selling author and university lecturer whose life is a borderline train wreck. His spendthrift wife and daughter are abroad, in whose absence he becomes increasingly emotionally reliant on his ex-wife Mi-ae (Oh Na-ra), who is secretly dating Kim’s friend and publisher Soon-mo (Kim Hee-won). At the same time, he struggles to connect with his teenage son Sung-kyung (Sung Yu-bin), who gets dumped by his pregnant girlfriend and starts fantasising about his married neighbour Jung-won (Lee Yoo-young).

On top of all of this, we have Yu-jin (Mu Jin-seong), a talented student of Kim who offers his teacher both the draft of his novel and his love. Stuck for seven years in writer’s block, Kim finds it harder by the day to skate by on the success of his past best-selling novel that’s fading from memory. When an impending debt further threatens what little stability he has left in his life, he decides to make Yu-jin his protégé and finish the novel together as well as confront his casual homophobia, despite quite literally running away from Yu-jin earlier.

The cast’s brilliant performances make this multi-storyline affair a relatively breezy watch. At the heart of the story’s thread is Kim Hyun, played by Ryu Seung-ryong (Kingdom, Extreme Job) who became the inaugural Best from the East honoree at the recent New York Asian Film Festival, where the film was also in competition. Ryu infuses Kim with warmth and humour that makes the character oddly charming. Equally splendid is Oh Na-ra (TV series My Mister) as the ex-wife Mi-ae, whose scenes with Ryu elicit the most laughter throughout the film.

Supported by Kim Tae-gyeong’s editing and precise comic timing – something that the Korean screen industry is yet to be eclipsed by anyone else – the actress-turned-director Cho Eun-ji offers a decent amount of playful fun in the film’s 113-minute running time. Known mostly for her acting roles in crime thrillers such as The Villainess and Confession of Murder, Cho’s debut direction was recognised with the Best New Director prize at the Baeksang Arts Award in April.

And that is a well-deserved honour, for first-timer Kim Na-deul’s script could certainly have been treated worse in less deft hands. The story proves emotionally honest in its portrayal of the different sides, sorrows, and joys of love, especially the poignant relationship between Kim and Yu-jin (look out for a Days of Being Wild reference, Wong Kar-wai fans!). However, the dramatisation of Kim’s screenplay veers off course in certain parts. In one climax scene of calamitous farce that sees nearly all characters together, rote comedy prevails over relatable drama and ends up exerting a distancing effect.

A chief example of such disengagement is the character of Jung-won the neighbour and her relationship with Kim’s son Sung-kyung. While Sung-kyung’s growing pains play a crucial role and are emotionally relatable for the audience, Jung-won’s existence seems entirely in service to his character. Accompanying him to an internet café to play video games and to sing karaoke after spontaneously running into him on the street, Lee Yoo-young’s character is regrettably pigeonholed as a manic pixie dream girl from the outset.

“You’re a writer. You got to have an interest in relationships”, says Kim to Yu-jin, writer to writer. Director Cho Eun-ji and writer Kim Na-deul, however, would do well to remember that – in order to have interesting relationships, you first need to craft well-conceived, well-rounded characters.

Originally published on View of the Arts.

很喜歡他們的演技，演員不論從小到大都非常松弛和完整，不管是柳承龍老師的開局一滴淚還是其他幾位“老”前輩的張力，還是劇中兒子“失戀”后的爆發(fā)和他曖昧對象在逃避時稍作保留的處理都非常有韻味，我最驚訝的是武鎮(zhèn)圣劇中在參加完父親葬禮返校后找老師那種的欲言又止的臃腫狀態(tài)是怎么達到的，真的賦予了那個場景更多的深度，也貼合了“我即是傷痛”的這個角色。

再回到故事本身，很多人會覺得作品想表達的太多，或者不能理解為什么要用“同志”作為主線。在我看來這個故事的主題反倒是十分明確：喜歡與被喜歡的故事。女導演非常細膩地用幾段過去和現(xiàn)在的感情關系來表達喜歡和不喜歡的故事，用“同志”的感情來加大了作品的張力以及“試圖”拔高作品內(nèi)涵，這個主線條的選擇有利有弊，壞處就在于會讓很多人不自覺的把注意力放到了“同志”這個議題上。如果觀眾能將眼光轉變到“不論男女，兩個人之間喜歡和被喜歡所帶來的一系列的感受”上，可能更能接受到故事表達的內(nèi)涵，每一條感情線都很完整細膩卻又各不相同，也講述了不同的年齡段不同的社會關系不同的性別在喜歡和被喜歡這件事情上所產(chǎn)生的化學反應和不斷成長的故事。

并沒有用太多的大起大落來描述，是一部很輕松但是同樣溫情的作品。

金作家在最后說：“即使摻雜了其它顏色，原本的色彩并不會消失，只是看起來像不同的顏色，但其中有我們所知道的原來的色彩。“

我很喜歡這部電影，它有趣，溫和，戲謔著愛情的悲傷與遺憾，在艷俗的世界里留下了一抹藍色，這藍色拯救了我們。

愛情的開始，那些吸引有可能會形成錯覺。有時候，我們在一起，卻不能歡欣同步。聶魯達卻說過：冬天的枝干，清晰、勇敢、堅強。是嗎？

”被拒絕的人背影都差不多“

是的