In recent years, South Korea has been making many wonderful films like The Host (2006), Okja (2017), Cart (2014), Miss Granny (2014) which was remade as Oh! Baby (2019) and then Parasite (2019).
Wonderful Nightmare (2015) is to be added to that list of fine cinema. The film is about a super-successful attorney Lee Yeon-woo in South Korea, taken to afterlife prematurely due to a clerical mistake at the other world. To get back at her life, she is tasked to live on earth for a month as another woman. Having been single and wealthy, Lee Yeon-woo finds it impossible to adjust to middle-class life and be a mother to two children. Did she manage to complete the month and did she return to her former luxurious life is the remainder of the story? We have seen in the past similar plots in works like the Tamil Play “Kaadhila Poo” by S Ve Shekar and Rajinikanth’s Athisaya Piravi (1990), what sets the Korean film apart is its contemporary settings.
The casting has been perfect: Actress Uhm Jung-Hwa has given a brilliant performance in the dual roles; The two kids Seo Shin-ae as Kim Ha-neul (a 15-year old girl) and Jung Ji-hoon as Kim Ha-roo (a 6-year old boy) have done well too. The film benefits from a well-written screenplay that maintains the humour, yet manages to keep us engaged throughout. The scene where the young boy goes to the store to buy medicines for her mother, wrongly thinking she is suffering from menopause (a word he hears from his friends) comes out warm. Learning from her young daughter that she was assaulted by her boyfriend and his friend, Lee Yeon-woo handles deftly the lawyer of the spoilt-brat in front of the school principal, and, not missing to warn the principal as well.
The film is available on YouTube for free, a nice comedy-drama to watch.
Wonderful Nightmare (2015)
Comments