Following his anarchic debut Gagman, Lee Myung-se’s My Love, My Bride (나의 사랑 나의 신부, Naui sarang, naui sinbu), might seem like a more subdued affair recalling the technicolor rom-coms of 1960s Hollywood, yet makes use of innovative stylistic techniques to explore the lives of a newlywed couple in a newly democratising Korea. Like many similarly themed films, it is keen to poke fun at the protagonist’s chauvinistic perspective and self-involvement, but cannot completely condemn them either in expecting at least a degree of audience identification with this Korean everyman.
The film opens boldly with Young-min (Park Joong-hoon) directly addressing the camera to introduce himself and explain that this is the most important day of his life as he plans to propose to university girlfriend Mi-young (Choi Jin-sil). She, however, has got the wrong end of the stick and is convinced that he’s going to dump her. This set of mismatched expectations and miscommunication sets the tone for much of their early marriage as they struggle to settle into the rhythms of co-habitation and gendered expectations of married life.
Mi-young has given up work on her marriage, though Young-min often stays late at the office and expects Mi-young to take care of all the domestic responsibilities. When Mi-young tells him that she’s going to stay overnight after visiting her mother, his first question is what he’s supposed to do about his dinner. Mi-young has already prepared it and left it in the fridge for him to warm up later, specifically instructing him not to stay out too late drinking. Young-min, however, takes this as an opportunity to rebel against the constraints of his newly married life and fill the temporary feminine absence by pursuing a colleague, Seung-hee (Kim Bo-yeon).
Seung-hee is in many ways portrayed as the polar opposite of country girl Mi-young whom Young-min occasionally mocks and looks down on for what he sees as her lack of sophistication and poor cultural knowledge. Seung-hee is a poet who dresses in smart suits exuding confidence and power that suggest she will not be subservient to men but assert her power over them. She shows Mi-young up first when everyone at the office suddenly invites themselves over to Young-min’s apartment for a “house warming”, expecting Mi-young to conjure up a dinner party to show off her domestic skills at moment’s notice. Seung-hee is a fine singer and offers a poignant rendition of Love Me Tender, prompting Young-min’s boss to insist Mi-young entertain them with a song. She obliges with a popular love song, but her singing voice is much more ordinary and her inability to hit the high notes provokes horrified faces from Young-min’s colleagues who continue to make fun of the pair because Mi-young had spelled out “I love you” in peas in the lunchbox she made for Young-min. The older men, meanwhile, all go to lunch together reflecting that they can hardly expect the same from their own wives after so many years of marriage.
Young-min is also constantly asking himself what love is and wondering if his married life will continue to be happy. Split into a series of chapters, the film focuses a number of episodes in which the couple must confront various issues from a fairly traumatic honeymoon and wedding night to Young-min’s wandering eye and irrational jealousy. Though he tells Seung-hee that marriage should be about love rather than ownership, on spotting Mi-young in a cafe with another man he jumps to the immediate conclusion that she must have met with an old lover who is trying to win her back. In fact, it was her old boss whom she ran into by chance while waiting for Young-min, and the reason that she’s crying is that he informed her one of their former colleagues has passed away. Young-min makes no attempt to talk to Mi-young about any of this, but starts giving her the cold shoulder for no reason endangering their growing bond as newlyweds. Mi-young, meanwhile, looks back on first love after receiving a letter from an old boyfriend who moved to Canada. He is no longer the handsome young man she once knew but portly middle-aged father of two.
To escape the boredom of her married life she takes a trip to a random rural town where she buys cigarettes, has her photo taken, and is offered an unexpected job opportunity after wandering into a cafe that is clearly a front for a delivery coffee service. Though Young-min is often quick to pride himself for his emotional intelligence as a writer, he’s often inconsiderate of Mi-young. When he wins the New Writer’s Award, he insults Mi-young’s outfit moments before they leave implying that she looks cheap and common and that people will expect a writer’s wife to look sophisticated. At the party, she’s sat sadly on her own ignored by everyone including Young-min, while he expects to trot her out for interviews as his loyal and supporting wife. Even when, she’s taken ill, his mind flashes to the scenario of her death on which his main thoughts are that he’s too busy for all this right now, and though it might be nice to live alone, who’s going to take care of his laundry?
Nevertheless, Mi-young’s temporary absence does make him realise that he misses her in ways other than the practical and seems to paper over the other cracks their relationship so that they can put all the petty disagreements to one side and love and accept each other. Lee uses a series of humorous devices including onscreen graphics and speech bubbles to reflect the protagonists’ thought processes, while the fantastic production design gives their world a sense of cosy unreality. Meanwhile, he uses the changing of the seasons to reflect the changing dynamics of couple, embracing romantic imagery such as the moon rising and snow falling as Young-min and Mi-young fall into a more settled rhythm and an older Young-min reflects that he is still in the process of finding out what love is, but is grateful for the happy life he’s been able to make for himself as a husband and father.
Trailer (no subtitles)
