Review: My Ordinary Love Story (2014)

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Directed by:
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Not available in Australia on DVD (to our knowledge)

My Ordinary Love Story is screening at this year’s Korean Film Festival in Australia. See the KOFFIA website for more details!

My Ordinary Love Story is not your ordinary love story. It starts off as one, but soon takes you on an unexpectedly wild ride along with the film’s main couple, Eun-jin and Hyeon-suk.

Eun-jin is an almost-30 year old woman who has yet to find the right man; that is, until she meets the plain but loving Hyeon-suk. The two fall in love and later decide to get married, but Eun-jin starts to suspect that Hyeon-suk is having an affair after checking his mobile phone and seeing some suspicious SMS messages.

Director Kwon Lee demonstrates his skills through telling this story that contains some incredibly unexpected plot twists. During the first half of the film, viewers will constantly be wondering: is Hyeon-suk a conman who is cheating on his fiancée, or are the apparent clues about his double life originating from Eun-jin’s own insecurity and paranoia due to her past unhappy experiences? When the answer is disclosed, the film’s story shifts in a very different direction…

The actors playing the leads are fantastic. Song Sae-byeok is convincing as the sweet and innocent Hyeon-suk, while Kang Ye-won gives a hilarious and likeable performance as a woman who will soon turn 30 and is under a great deal of pressure to find the right man and get married, because of the expectations of her family and society. The pair appears together in most of the scenes in the film and their interactions are tender, touching and at times, terrifying. Their on-screen chemistry is great and makes the story believable.

Without giving anything away, I also want to comment that My Ordinary Love Story’s ending is one of the best film endings I have seen in a while. It does not really conclude the story, but instead leaves it up to the audience’s imagination / interpretation as to what happens. However, there are enough clues that viewers should have no doubt in their minds what Eun-jin will choose to do.

My Ordinary Love Story is an unexpected gem. It is entertaining, funny and refreshing. I particularly recommend it for people who like genre-bending films. Watching this will be a great way to spend 90 minutes of your time.

8.5 delicious tripes out of 10.
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