Happy End (1999 film)

Happy End
Hangul 해피엔드
Hanja none
Revised Romanization Haepi endeu
McCune–Reischauer Haep‘i endŭ
Directed by Jung Ji-woo
Produced by Lee Eun
Jeon Chang-rok
Written by Jung Ji-woo
Starring Choi Min-sik
Jeon Do-yeon
Joo Jin-mo
Music by Jo Yeong-wook
Kim Gyu-yang
Cinematography Kim Woo-hyung
Edited by Kim Hyeon
Kim Yong-su
Production
company
Release dates
  • 11 December 1999 (1999-12-11)
Running time
 99 minutes
Country South Korea
Language Korean

Happy End is a South Korean film released in 1999. Written and directed by Jung Ji-woo, it's about a woman who's having an affair while her husband is unemployed.

Plot

Happy End is about Choi Bora (Jeon Do-yeon), a successful career woman who becomes involved with her ex-lover, Kim Il-beom (Joo Jin-mo). Bora's home life is a snore: she's mother to an infant child and her husband, Seo Min-ki (Choi Min-sik) has lost his job, leaving Bora as the family's sole breadwinner. It's unclear if Bora is with Kim just for the sex or for the passion, both of which Seo seems incapable of giving. But it seems the jobless Seo hasn't been just wandering around parks and reading romance novels as first thought; he knows something is going on, and he's collecting evidence.

Seo has been emasculated by his inability to find a job and director Jung hammers this point home with a brief montage showing Seo grocery shopping, cooking, and doing the laundry. These are all very feminine jobs, particularly in very patriarchal South Korea. Most interesting is that Seo seems content to live with the cheating Bora, very much aware of his own shortcomings, which leaves him willing to be wronged.

Bora is unable to stop going back to Kim even though she seems physically and emotionally damaged by their continued affair. Kim has realized that he is hooked on her, and is very aware of his jealously-driven actions toward her and her family. Without each other, they have no passion in their lives, and so they must keep going back to each other.

Although Happy End ends rather unhappily, the film is not altogether downbeat. Director Jung Ji-woo has taken the role of observer, using mostly handheld cameras to capture the events in the lives of his 3 main subjects.

The film is sexually explicit, and there is one scene of brutal violence.

Cast

Bibliography

See also

References

    External links

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