Genre: Drama
Starring: Kang-hee Choi, Yeong-ae Kim, Su-bin Bae, Yeong-nam Jang, Il-hwa Choi
Release year: 2009
Language: Korean
Subtitle: English
SYNOPSIS:
Aeja (Kang-hee Choi) was once a promising student. Not only did she do well in school, she also loved to write poetry on rainy days & also possessed excellent fighting skills. Her dream was to become a novelist and a few years later she moved to Seoul to fulfill those dreams.
Aeja is now 29 years old and has not achieved any of the success she has hoped for. Her only accomplishment to date is winning an award from a local newspaper organziation. Meanwhile, Aeja's personal life is not much better off. Her boyfriend cheated on her and eventually ran off leaving behind large amounts of debt. Aeja was nearly pushed to the edge, but then channels her energy into a writing contest that offers a large reward.
While writing for the contest Aeja receives a message from her mother asking her to come back to Busan for her brother's wedding. Aeja's mother has always been tough on her and when she goes back to Busan her mother treats her no different. Then one day, Aeja's mother suddenly collapses and her world starts shaking from the seams.
RATING: 8.5/10
REVIEW:
Choi Kang-hee ("My Scary Girl") brings to the screen another atypical heroine, the tomboy Ae-ja. Her outmoded name, which undoubtedly invited much teasing at school when she was young, sums up the small battles she must fight in everyday life. The movie begins with the baby-faced actress posing most naturally as a rebellious high school student.
An epitome of paradox, she is the best and the worst of students - though always ranking on top, the dreamy poet constantly walks into trouble as she gets caught smoking, cuts class on rainy days to write prose by the beach and makes midnight phone calls to her teacher after indulging in underage drinking. The only person who can restrain this untamed "Tolstoy of Busan" is her charismatic mother, Yeong-heui, played by veteran actress Kim Yeong-ae.
The two sharp-tongued Busan women are constantly gnawing at each other, with Ae-ja complaining of her mother's biased affections for her older brother who gets to study abroad.
Ten years later, Ae-ja, 29, is settled in Seoul but is still wrestling with words as a penniless aspiring novelist and getting into trouble. All she has is an unimpressive resume adorned by an insignificant literary prize, a cheating boyfriend and petty arguments with her arch-nemesis mother.
Ae-ja is beckoned back home for her brother's wedding. But the family event is far from being warm and cuddly. Always feeling like the ugly duckling, Ae-ja cries "it's unfair" when mom sells real estate to finance her "spoiled" brother's company while she nags her about getting a real job.
Just when Ae-ja gets her sweet revenge by virtually ruining the ceremony with a crude joke, though, Yeong-heui collapses. But the film refrains from taking a sappy melodramatic turn. Ae-ja does not mature overnight just because her mom has cancer; the idea of her feisty mother dying eludes her and she rather reluctantly becomes her caretaker.
The two are biting and barking at each other as always, though this time small fights involve using needles and painkillers properly. However, time and circumstances have inevitably changed, and Ae-ja finds herself becoming the nagger rather than the nagged.
There have been hyper-realistic dramas about love-hate mother-and-daughter relationships such as "Mayonnaise", starring "Mother - 2009" heroine Kim Hye-ja opposite the late Choi Jin-sil. "Ae-ja" continues the tradition of offering vivid characters and subtle nuances and dynamics of relationships.
The film keeps things somewhat lighter with playful theatrical interventions, but the movie is, of course, aimed at tugging the viewer's heartstrings. The use of sappy violin music is clich?, but Kang and Kim offer the finest tearjerker performances and the camera keeps a surprisingly cool distance from the sentimentality, allowing the viewer to overlook the artifice.
Source: Hancinema
PREVIEW:
RELATED LINKS:
*** ONE-FILE LINKS ***
DISC 1 - DISC 2 - SUB
*** SPLITTED FILE LINKS ***
Using FFSJ to join the files. (HOW?)
MF:
DISC 1:
PART 01 - PART 02 - PART 03 - PART 04 - PART 05 - PART 06 - PART 07 - PART 08
DISC 2:
PART 01 - PART 02 - PART 03 - PART 04 - PART 05 - PART 06 - PART 07 - PART 08
SUB
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