Christmas in August (Palwol ui Christmas, 1998)

Hur Jin-Ho

Korea

108 mins, color, Korean (English subtitles)

Despite the superlatives that usually accompany this film, CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST was a disappointment. The story is simple enough. An ominously ill owner of a photo studio Jung-won (Han Suk-kyu) wearing a perpetual grin and a seemingly happy attitude waits for the results of medical tests. Only his father and sister are aware of his condition but they seem to fret far more about it than he does. Then, one day the beautiful car meter maid Da-rim (Shim Eun-Ha) saunters into the studio with an urgent request, predictably initiating the chain of events that inevitably lead to both characters falling in love.

This they do and, as should be apparent by now, we are in the well trodden path of cinematic romance against an impending disaster. While Hollywood types would gleefully proceed to embalm us with noxious schlock accompanied by heavy-handed melodrama masquerading as poignancy, CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST stubbornly refuses to do so, insisting on a typically Asian depiction of things mostly left unsaid, and actions left undone. In fact, there is more in this film that does not happen than does.

Usually this approach works wonders for me but not this time. For a while I thought that the film would be some kind of a philosophical statement, like IKIRU or CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7, that is, it would be a rumination on life, death, and all that jazz. It wasn't. Then I thought it would be about the "redeeming power of love" or some other such sherbet that it easy to say but impossible to understand. It wasn't. Then the guy died and the film ended without saying what it was about.

Actually, my complaint is with the protagonist. Okay, so he was wearing the mask, laughing away when he should have been crying. Okay, so he did not dare let anyone know about his terminal illness (when he found out that it was such). Okay, maybe he wanted to spare Da-rim's feelings. (Did he, though? I never did find out what he wrote in that final letter to her.) Herein lies the problem, and it is not an artistic quibble, but rather a philosophical disagreement of such vehemence that it caused me to dislike the entire film.

In a nutshell, I do not think Jung-won had the right to make such a decision for Da-rim, which in fact he did by leaving her out of the loop. I don't know that he spared her the agony. I do know that he caused her much grief by disappearing so suddenly and without a word of explanation. If she loved him, she would have probably preferred to be with him until the end. Or maybe he was afraid that she wouldn't stick by him for that? Now that I think about it, this makes more sense. Given her fickle and unreliable behavior (like setting dates and then whimsically failing to show up), Jung-won perhaps wanted to avoid the disappointment with his first and greatest love, who had run off to marry some other guy.

Interestingly, Da-rim did not track him down although I am sure she could have if she wanted to. How hard is it to get someone's address? If she really wanted, she could have found out that he was in the hospital. She did not. Instead, she contented herself with writing what I presume was an infantile letter, and smashing the studio window in an outburst of childish petulance. While the love affair, if it was ever to happen, would have had a deep meaning, and therefore ache, for Jung-won, it would have been a fling for the terminally nonserious Da-rim.

Perhaps this is the explanation? If so, then I think the film wasn't that bad after all. In any case, most reviews lead people to expect more than the film is prepared to yield. Unless you buy into my interpretation, of course.

August 21, 2001.