My Wife got Married (A-nae-ga kyeol-hon-haet-da) [2008] • South Korea

I think it's a sign of real talent when a director can take an implausible scenario and stifle any objections to it simply by making it fun, not to mention plausible. This is a film, nominally, about bigamy with the added twist that the bigamist is a woman. But that's just the schtick. It's really just another film about a man's obsessive desire for a beautiful, care-free, intelligent, independent, quirky, sexually confident, and slightly crazy woman. Ritual, La Belle, Interview, Green Tea. The list of films like this, with variations on the theme, is endless. Every guy who didn't get and stay faithfully married at eighteen knows a woman like this and every woman knows this power. The setup doesn't require exposition, just a good actress. Son Ye-jin fills the role here admirably. She's a paradigm of contemporary Korean actresses: beautiful, sexy and seductive, successful, yet pure and nice, innocent and wholesome, almost virginal, all at once.

This isn't a deep or thoughtful film. It doesn't mine the character's motivations or history in search of discovery or enlightenment. It just plays things out. When the first husband asks Son's character how she can divide her love between two men she responds, "I don't think of it as dividing. It's doubling." How do you respond to that? You can't. Well you can, but you'd be out on the doorstep in no time if you did. When she declares to her first husband that there is another man in her life but she was afraid to tell him because she thought he would think she was crazy, she's telling the truth. She didn't want to upset a man she loves. Sure, the first husband is sort of a wimp but that's what happens when an angel drains your soul. He cries and tries to find strength, and it's funny watching him fail.

Don't go into this looking for social commentary or deep thoughts on the complicated nature of modern romance. It's just a Rom-Com with a delicious performance from Son Ye-jin. If you like her, and the broad theme doesn't morally prevent you from watching it, you should enjoy this film. It ultimately stays on the safe side of the road and only hints at being risqué, such as when Son Ye-jin fulfills her first husband's sexual fantasy of performing oral sex on him and keeping his penis in her mouth until he wakes up in the morning. Son Ye-jin!

★★★★

Director: Yun-su Jeon
Starring: Ye-jin Son, Ju-hyuk Kim, Sang-wook Joo, Seong-hun Cheon

IMDb