I can't believe I hadn't heard of this movie until it showed up in my Netflix recommendations. Why isn't everyone talking about this movie? Why didn't it win best foreign picture? Why... Oh, right. No car chases. No sex scenes. No scenes in bars, or at football games. Subtitles. If you can enjoy a movie with subtitles, if you don't think someone has to look or act just like you to be comprehensible as a human being, if you've ever read a poem and loved it, you will likely love this movie.
I'm not even going to talk about the plot. The plot is wonderful, but not really the point. This is a movie about isolation, and human connections, and what makes us human at all. It is a social commentary, and a beautifully told fable. To call it a romantic comedy, to compare it to an American movie with a similar title, is to miss the point entirely.
Warning: before you watch this movie, you'd better figure out where you can find a local source for black bean noodles ('jajangmyun' in Korean). Even if you've never tasted them, you'll be craving them by the end of the movie. I have tasted them - fresh from a street vendor in Seoul - and I'm now nearly wild for black bean noodles.
And this basic hunger for a simple comfort food - for enjoyment of sustenance with all the associations that come with true comfort food - sums up the movie nicely.
