Post by floooat on Jun 6, 2006 0:28:29 GMT 7
The film tells the story of a male college student (Cha Tae-Hyun) and a girl (Jun Ji-hyun) whose name is never given (in this movie). Our male protagonist, Gyeon-woo, does not seem to be able to catch a break. His romantic prospects are so pathetic that even his mother tries to get into the act, telling him to go visit his aunt so he can get hooked up with a girl. Gyeon-woo has more pride than that so he refuses. He goes to the train station for a ride home. There he sees the Girl, stone drunk and standing precariously close to the edge of the train platform. He pulls her to safety just in time.
Inside the train, Gyeon-woo cannot help but stare at the girl wavering back and forth, who he is slightly attracted to but repulsed by her drunkenness. Finally, she throws up on an old man, calls Gyeon-woo "honey" and faints. Gyeon-woo, confused, carries her all the way to the nearest motel. While he is showering, her phone rings and he runs out to answer it, still naked. He informs the caller of his location, and is soon received by a pair of police officers. A short struggle later, he is taken to jail.
He eventually gets out. That morning the Girl calls him out to a café, where he details the previous night. She seems irritated and drags Gyeon-woo off to a bar, where she gets hammered again, resulting in yet another trip to the same motel.
The Girl is a fierce character. After this second overnight stay at the motel, she seeks Gyeon-woo out in class. Faced with a feisty teacher, she succeeds in getting him out of class by claiming to be on the way to an abortion, with him being the father. Her plan a success, she takes Gyeon-woo to the theme park to enjoy themselves.
She is an aspiring scriptwriter, giving Gyeon-woo three different looks at genres. The first is an action movie - "The Demolition Terminator" - which switches gender roles, symbolically having the Girl save her helpless lover (Gyeon-woo). The second is a wild perversion of one of Gyeon-woo's beloved melodramas in which the Girl, having died, asks that her lover be buried along with her, even alive. The resulting situation is quite humorous. The last is a wuxia/samurai movie spoof full of genre clichés and anachronisms. All three feature the same common thread: the Girl is from the future.
Despite all the horrible things Gyeon-woo endures, he is determined to stick with the Girl. He feels a pain inside her and wants to ease it. So no matter what happens, he bites his tongue and trudges on. Throughout the first half of the movie, she is resolute in her pain, dishing it out in plenty. But as the second half comes around, she begins to change; she shows vulnerability.
The second - and the more touching - half of the movie begins with the Girl waiting for Gyeon-woo after school. She takes him out to the park and suddenly complains about the pain her high heels are causing her. In the subsequent conversation, she convinces Gyeon-woo to switch shoes with her. Overjoyed, she tells him to chase her around the park and which he does until it starts raining. They walk to her house where Gyeon-woo meets her parents, after which he overhears a massive argument between the Girl and her mother over her relationship with him. Gyeon-woo does not hear from her for a long time.
For their 100th-day anniversary, she calls him and asks him to bring her a rose during class. He does this, leading to a touching and romantic scene where he follows the beautiful music of Pachelbel to where she is. But the night unfolds further and again he is faced with her parents, the Girl herself unconscious for the third time. Her father, infuriated, arranges a break-up.
By now, Gyeon-woo realizes how special the Girl is. He is unwilling to let her go. Upon being summoned to scout her date, he is disheartened to be labeled as a mere friend. Broken, he leaves the date with 10 rules one must follow to make the Girl happy. Unbeknownst to Gyeon-woo, the Girl hears these 10 rules and rushes to find him. They meet once again in the train station.
She asks him to write a letter and bring it with him. There, she unveils a time capsule where their letters will go inside and be buried next to a tree on a mountain for two years. In two years, they shall meet again to read the letters. Then they separate.
Gyeon-woo finds himself on the mountain in two years but does not find her there with him. Depressed, he opens the time capsule, finds a frog inside, and takes out her letter to read. The Girl had a boyfriend at first, who did everything she ever wanted and more. Like Gyeon-woo, he brought her a rose on their 100th day and like Gyeon-woo, met her on the train. She was happy and content, planning their lives together under the very tree and taking long walks in the sunset next to the lake. His sudden death left her heartbroken. In remembrance of the tragic event, she and his mother make a trip each year to the lake where he drowned. She also says that her ex-boyfriend's mother has been trying to introduce someone to her so that she will move on.
A year passes without her feeling any better, tortured by her lost love. Meeting Gyeon-woo only makes her feel worse because all the things she does to him causes her to fall more and more for him. And she cannot let go of the memories in her heart. She finally concludes that if they are really meant to be together, fate shall bring them back together.
Gyeon-woo tries to figure out the Girl.One year after Gyeon-woo visited the tree, the Girl finally comes. Sitting under the tree is an old man. Throughout the conversation, the old man is very interested in finding out why the Girl was one year late. It is implied in the movie that old man is the Gyeon-woo from the future. Some speculation on why the future Gyeon-woo wants to find out why the Girl was one year late: (1) The Girl and Gyeon-woo got married in the end, but the Girl still refuses to tell him why she was one year late. (2) The Girl broke up with Gyeon-woo again and he never found out why she was one year late. Throughout the movie, the relationship between Gyeon-woo and the Girl is an on-off bittersweet affair.
After the old man tells the Girl the touching story of the tree getting replaced by Gyeon-woo (his younger self), the old man disappears and the Girl looks at the sky to see a tiny UFO flying across the sky and then vanishing. The Girl had mentioned a few times that she wished to meet someone from the future. Her wish is granted by the old Gyeon-Woo from the future.
After her encounter with the UFO, she proceeds to the place where her ex-boyfriend died from drowning. In a deleted scene from the director's cut, she throws the necklace into the sea. This symbolizes that she finally has closure.
In the final scene, Gyeon-woo and the Girl come full circle when they find out that the one person they have been declining to meet over the years is the one person they have always wanted to see again, the one person that they had always been with before the break-up. The Girl's ex-boyfriend's mother is actually Gyeon-Woo's aunt who since the beginning of the film, has wanted to introduce him to "a girl."
