ONE FINE SPRING DAY (South Korea/Hong Kong/Japan, 2001)



Directed by: Hur Jin-Ho
Starring: Lee Young-Ae, Yoo Ji-Tae
116 minutes, 35mm, in Korean with English subtitles
: : New York Premiere : :

"Sketching the tiniest gradations in a bumpy love affair,
ONE FINE SPRING DAY is a metaphysical movie of the purest kind."
-Derek Elley, Variety

How do you know a movie about relationships is good? When it rips out your stuffing, kicks a hole in your heart, and leaves you begging for more. Director Hur Jin-Ho's previous film, CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST, was praised by the Village Voice as "...one of the most mature and gracious tearjerkers ever made. " ONE FINE SPRING DAY is even better.

A symphony of loss scored to the rhythms of nature, SPRING DAY is about two sound engineers who meet, fall in love, and break up. Every inch of their relationship is tracked as it plays out from February to July, and
painful identification awaits anyone who's ever been in love. Meticulously acted by Yoo Ji-Tae (ATTACK THE GAS STATION) and Lee Young-Ae (JOINT SECURITY AREA), ONE FINE SPRING DAY is one of the few movies to focus on the beauty of its soundtrack and not just its photography, as the two characters obsessively try to record wind rustling through a bamboo forest for a radio show.

Statistically speaking, every relationship will end in heartbreak. One partner will die before the other or, more likely, they'll just drift apart and break up after a few years, or months, or even weeks. Given this universal law, it's not surprising that movies usually end when both people realize they're in love with each other and jump up and down and smile a lot - which is strange, because that's usually where it all starts getting complicated. Most directors prefer to deal with the simple stuff, and leave the complications for real life. So whenever an onscreen couple admits they're in love with each other, expect the credits to roll.

Examining life inch by inch, Director Hur Jin-Ho prefers the complications. With only one other feature under his belt, he's put together a movie that's as raw as an exposed nerve ending where none of the characters have any kind of showy emotional blowout, but instead slowly slide down a glass slope of disappointing self-realizations. Every horrible and exhilarating moment is preserved in golden sunlight, or trapped in cold blue ice, then offered up onscreen for an audience to cringe to, in unison. Quietly powerful, and subtly devastating, ONE FINE SPRING DAY is downbeat, poignant, painful, and strangely cathartic. Just like breaking up.

While most directors focus on sight, ONE FINE SPRING DAY focuses on sound. When air molecules are moved, they jostle other air molecules, and others, and others, all the way to our eardrums where we turn the physical movement of the molecules into electromagnetic impulses in our brains. But a lot of people think that the air keeps moving, that the atmosphere contains an impression of every sound ever made, like a planet-sized memory bank. Every shouted argument, every whispered sweet nothing, it's all out there on the low frequencies, hidden from our hearing. And maybe that's Hur Jin-Ho's point. Love doesn't last forever. But the world does. And as long as that's true, maybe things are going to turn out alright after all.

Official website: http://www.springday.co.kr/index_2.html