[movie 2005] April Snow 외출

[Guest liezle]

Good morning! I'll be posting camille's translation on the reviews of April Snow later. For the meantime, let me share with you what camille posted in BYJ's Quilt

Some news about April Snow in France

posted by camille in BYJ's Quilt

camille's blog ~ http://toujours-byj.blogspot.com/

camille wrote ~

Hi Quilt family

Today I’m happy to say that April Sow has received a lot of good reviews in France. Actually, the movie is ranked at the 3rd position by the critics of French media among the 13 movies released on April 12th on one the most important French movie portal Allociné. This website particularly collects all the reviews from French important magazines, attributes themselves a note (from 0 to 4 stars) then makes an average to classify the movies released each week. (April Snow has now two 4 four stars, nine 3 stars, four 2 stars and four 1 star)

Bb has once asked me if it’s quite normal that a foreign film has so many reviews. I have to say yes when it’s an American movie or it's from some Asian famous director. But in this case, it even surprises me to see so many reviews of April Snow, even on daily newspapers given freely in Paris subway and they are all good. I think that the presence of April Snow at various French festivals has contributed to this notoriety and this numbers of reviews, because dir HUR was not famous in France as others Korean directors like Hong Sang Soo, Kim Ki Duk, ….

To give you an example, April snow has received more French reviews than Taeguggi released on May 11th 2005, although the French distributor of Taeguggi is United International Picture, a big distributor.

And I’m not sure but I don’t think Taeguggi was ranked at a high position as April Snow when it was released. (The number of reviews for Taeguggi on Allociné is 14 with two 4 stars, five 3 stars, two 2 stars and five 1 star). I remember some critics said that the movie is too alike Saving Private Ryan of Steven Spielberg.

Now I would like to share with you the 2 reviews from the magazines which makes Allociné gives to April Snow 4 stars. They’re Télérama and TéléCinéobs, two serious and well-known weekly magazines here. Télécinéobs is from Le Nouvel Observateur, a well-known weekly magazine like l’Express or Paris Match.

Happy Eastern everyone.

[Guest liezle]

Review of April Snow in Télérama magazine - France

From Télérama magazine by Cécile Mury

French to English translation by camille [ http://toujours-byj.blogspot.com/]

Sur Fond de trauma, un bijou coréen de délicatesse, avec des comédiens lumineux

On ne sait encore comment classer Hur Jin-Ho sur l’échiquier du cinéma coréen. Son nouveau film (le premier à sortir en France) a triomphé en Asie. C’est un bijou de délicatesse, l’histoire d’une rencontre improbable. Appelés d’urgence à l’hôpital, dans une station touristique loin de Séoul, In-Su et Seo-Young recoivent un double choc. LA femme de l’un et le mari de l’autre sont dans le coma, après un accident de voiture, et ils étaient manifestement amants. Murés dans leur stupeur, les époux trompés se croisent, de couloirs aseptisés en halls anonymes. Mais peu à peu, unis par une identique souffrance, ils vont s’aimer à leur tour.

D’autres cinéastes ont déjà exploré semblable trame. On pense à l’Ombre d’un soupçon de Sidney Pollack

Mais Hur Jin-Ho évite tous les écueils. Ni drame ni vaudeville, et encore moins romance à l’eau de rose, son film se situe dans un ailleurs intime, où les certitudes ont disparu, où les repères sont à réinventer. Cet espace flottant, ce vide creusé par l’absence et la trahison s’emplit peu à peu par la tendresse. En longs plans silencieux, en gestes involontaires, en baisers esquissés, April Snow déroute par sa douceur. Et parle avec pudeur de blessure et de pardon, d’espoir et de désarroi. Les deux interprètes, Bae Yong-Joon et Son Ye-Jin , prêtent une grâce fragile et lumineuse à leur personnage. Leurs caresses, leurs hésitations, leur sensibilité incarnent à merveille l’état amoureux : un miracle, comme la neige en avril.

Translation

On trauma backdrop, a Korean jewel of delicacy, with luminous actors

We don’t know how to classify Hur Jin-Ho on the Korean cinema’s chessboard yet. His new movie (the first to be released in France) triumphed over Asia. It’s a jewel of delicacy, the story of an improbable encounter. Called urgently to the hospital, at a tourist resort far from Seoul, In-Su and Seo-Young receive a double shock. The woman of the one and the husband of the other are in the coma, after a car accident, and they were obviously lovers. Walled in their stupor, the misled husbands meet, from aseptic hallways to anonymous halls. But, little by little, joined by the same pain, they will also fall in love each other.

Other filmmaker has already explored similar scenario. We think about Random Heart of Sidney Pollack But Hur Jin-Ho avoids all the pitfalls. Neither drama nor light comedy, and less than a soppy romance, his movie is in an inner elsewhere, where the certainty disappeared, where the bench mark has to be reinvented. This floating space, this emptiness dug by the absence and betrayal fill up little by little by tenderness. In long quiet plans, in involuntary movements, in sketched kisses, April Snow fazes by its gentleness. And talks with decency about wound and forgiveness, hope and distress. The two interpreters, Bae Yong-Joon and Son Ye-Jin, give a fragile and luminous grace to their character. Their caresses, their hesitations, their sensitivity portray wonderfully the love mood : a miracle, like snow in April.

[Guest liezle]

Review of April Snow in TéléCinéObs magazine - France

From TéléCinéObs magazine by Bernard ACHOUR

French to English translation by Camille [http://toujours-byj.blogspot.com/]

Un mélo tout en lyrisme et en bouillonnements secrets

Le sujet, impossible, ressemble à une caricature de mélo. Un homme et une femme, au chevet de leurs époux respectifs plongés dans le coma après un accident de voiture, découvrent que ces derniers sont amants. Qu’on ne s’y trompe pas. Par sa dignité, son lyrisme retenu et ses bouillonnements secrets, ce pur bonsaï de cinéma est ce qu’on a vu de plus émouvant depuis « Sur la route de Madison », C’est tout dire.

Translation

A melodrama all in lyricism and boiling secrets

The subject, impossible, looks like a melodrama caricature. A man and a woman, coming to the bedside of their respective spouses plunged in the coma after a car accident, discover that they are lovers. But that must not mislead us here. By its dignity, its reserved lyricism and its boiling secrets, this pure bonsaï of cinema is what we have seen as the most moving since "The Bridges of Madison County". (camille : it’s a movie with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep). It’s all what I want to say.

camille : April Snow is the only movie who has the maximum note from this magazine, as you can see on the second pic.

liezle : i like also like "The Bridges of Madison County"

[Guest frances]

More April Snow Reviews from France

translation from French to English by Camille

posted by Camille in BYJ's KOB

Bonsoir,

I hope you don’t get tired with all the French reviews of April Snow and still enjoy reading them because I would like to share with you some more. The french movie portal I told you before gave 3 stars (4 is the maximum) to April Snow with theirs reviews.

However, there are some words rather difficult to translate, I hope you don’t mind my English.

From Zurban weekly magazine :

Coma Coreen

April Snow, la rencontre de deux âmes esseules, un duo d’acteurs emouvants.

Un homme et une femme decouvrent que leurs conjoints respectifs, dans le coma apres un accident, sont amants. Sur la meme trame que dans l’Ombre d’un Soupçon de Sydney Pollack, Hur Jin-Ho suit la rencontre de deux etres esseules.

In-Su et Seo-Young sont rapproches par leur moitie condamnes au silence, mais luttent pour rester la tête hors de l’eau. Comprendre l’impossible et continuer a vivre.

Bâtissant son recit sur une suite de tableaux sensibles et retenus, le cineaste reussit un pas de deux émouvant. Le duo d’acteurs affronte le quotidien a travers emotions et sensations, sans regard moralisateur ni psychologie parasite. Le ton est profond et delicat, et Hur Jin-Ho excelle a decrire des êtres fragilises dans la Coree contemporaine.

Un cineaste a suivre.

Translated from french to english by camille

Korean coma

April Snow, the encounter of two lonely hearts, a duo of moving actors.

A man and a woman discover that their respective spouses, in the coma after an accident, are lovers. With the same plot as Random Hearts of Sydney Pollack, Hur Jin-Ho follows the encounter of two lonely persons.

In-Su and Seo-Young are brought together by their half doomed to silence, but fight to remain the head out of water. To understand the impossible and to continue to live.

Building his story on a succession of sensitive and reserved scenes, the film director succeeds to make a moving “pas de deux”.

The duo of actors faces the daily life through emotions and feelings, without moralizing gaze nor parasitic psychology. The note is deep and delicate, and Hur Jin-Ho excels to describe weakened persons in the contemporary Korea.

A film director to attend to.

From L’Humanite newspaper by Dominique Widemann

http://www.humanite.presse.fr/journal/2006...06-04-12-828039

Translated from french to english by camille

A loving spring

Korea. After Christmas in August and One fine spring day, Hur Jin-Ho seizes the lyricism of a love affair under the snow.

April Snow, of Hur Jin-ho.

Korea. 1 h 45.

The Korean cinema doesn’t fail, once more, to enchant us. Kim Ki-duk, Hong Sang-soo, Im Kwon-taek and now Hur Jin-Ho with his beautiful April Snow attest a cinematography which European spectators never cease to recognize their qualities.

April Snow displays a young man, In-su, and a young woman, Seo-Young. They meet at the bedside of their respective spouses, both plunged in a deep coma following a car accident. The same car.

The love affair that the two wounded persons are involved will appear to us after In-Su came out from the snowstorm in the way to the hospital.

We will be the captive witnesses of the swing in which two young persons are precipitated, without noise.

The common story which will bring them together, although they didn’t want it at first, will shiver at the rhythm of their emotions.

Fear, anger, desire, until the feeling in love which will seize them, all will pass by their daily movements. A tuft of hair which he raises, a mouthful that she offers.

A naturalist lens follows them, which knows how to use an allusion at the highest way, to make the silences speaking.

April Snow produces the opposite exercise, on the same argument, of Random Hearts of Sydney Pollack. The American film director had chosen a much more explicit way.

However, nothing, not the tiniest tension, the slightest doubt, the most fleeting comet of inquiries, the gaseous emanation of contradiction, can escape from the gaze that Hur Jin-Ho focuses on this couple who seeks for each other under our eyes.

The two actor and actress, Bae Yong-Joon and Son Ye-Jin, don’t have an easy work, keeping so close by the emotional camera which surrounds them at every place.

The light - which is In-Su’s job - takes full part of it. It is saddened with the pallid colour of the hospital, the white frost of the field which Seo-Young and In-su pass through to go to the funeral of the "collateral" victim of their spouses, the white of Buddhist mourning. It turned golden with the embraces, the intimacy of the meal, blooms in pastels when love blossoms.

The "Hallyu" which Hur Jin-Ho belongs was in particular supported by a quota policy requiring the theatres of the country to program a certain number of days for national productions every year. The South Korean authorities are reducing actually this exceptional cultural form. A quite great damage.

From MCinema.com by Hugo de Saint Phalle http://cinema.aliceadsl.fr/fichefilm.aspx?...016412&file=Pro

Translated from french to english by camille

Will we have SNOW IN SPRING?

Today, the Korean cinema is not simply the visual audacity of Park Chan-wook (OLDBOY), the formal brilliance of Hong Sang-soo (LA FEMME EST L'AVENIR DE L'HOMME) or the deep subject of Kim Ki-Duk (LOCATAIRES).

There is also some beautiful small stories, poetic and touching, like the story of APRIL SNOW. In spite of a transparent scenario, director Hur Jin-Ho plays his cards skilfully, giving to the relation of his two principal characters an endearing feeling, with a permanent concern of sobriety.

From the beginning of the movie, we fall in love with these two cuckolds, bringing together by an unfortunate accident, giving to us their sorrow, their desire of reconstruction and their need for love. With his subtle staging and his symbolic metaphor about feelings, as unpredictable as the weather, this drama recalls irremediably FAILAN, another impressing Korean drama. And even if APRIL SNOW is less intense than Song Hye-sung’s movie, it has something to charm the romantic hearts, sensitive to delicious uncertainties of beginning loves.

[Guest naruyotsuba]

Are there any subs for this movie out there that doesn't have really bad english?

[Guest liezle]

this movie is so sad. I just uploaded it in my CB ^^

http://down.clubbox.co.kr/hachigogo/3w6x6

sub

http://down.clubbox.co.kr/hachigogo/2w6x6

hi naruyotsuba! have you tried the above clubbox? please check it out. likewise, check the previous pages please, i believe there's another 1 or 2 who uploaded AS their clubboxes.

[Guest frances]

~ i hope camille wont mind my sharing in the thread these wonderful reviews of April Snow from ordinary French moviegoers

this is such a thrill to know how the French are appreciating April Snow.

AS is a beautiful art film and i hope those who have not yet seen it, try to find the time & watch this film

from camille's blog ~ http://toujours-byj.blogspot.com//

mercredi, avril 26, 2006

April Snow : some reviews from French spectators !

camille wrote ~~

Hello my Bae sisters

Today I would like to share with you some reviews of April Snow written by French spectators on one of the most important French movie portal. Mishio has asked me once about this special website so now I will try to explain to all of you. The singularity of this website is that it collects all kinds of informations for every movie released in France. It also collects media reviews then makes an average to set up a ranking for each week. Movie-goers can write their reviews and attribute themselves a note for the movie but what they write must be checked by the moderators before posting. You can write why you like or don’t like a movie but not with rude words.

It’s why I consider it as a reference for cinema because people who left their comments or reviews generally explain their reason and have good manner, not just slander a movie because they don’t like an actor or for their pleasure to slander.

I’m glad that most of them appreciate the movie. April Snow was ranked at first position by spectators reviews among all the movies released the same day and today, at the beginning of the 3rd week, still maintains among the three first position of all the movies still shown in French movie theatre.

For me, it’s exceptional and I even didn’t expect it, especially for a small movie without lots of advertisement, with unknown director and actors (for French people) and face to big blockbusters.

I hope you enjoy reading some of these reviews (4 stars) as me, btw 4 stars are the maxi note and actually AS gets 15 four stars, 4 three stars, 1 two stars and 1 one star.

From http://www.allocine.fr/film/critiquepublic...ilm=108687.html

Translated from french to english by camille

CharlieBrown - le 23/04/2006

What a remarkable film! And what a cinema’s lesson !... With an incredible economy of dialogues, the director gives us, by the only force of the image and its timing, its slow rhythm that he imposes, all the emotions and the feelings which we can wait from such a subject and this, without never falling into melodrama or low-level romanticism... A prowess! The two leading actors (splendid in every way of term...) contribute very much for this.... From a wry subject, we have a love story so beautiful which we haven’t seen for a while ! All are in the suggestion, the lightness, the fluidity... The two actors never say a superfluous word, never make a superfluous gesture... They don’t play the characters, they are the characters ! Definitely, the Korean cinema is really what has been made as the most interesting for a few years... (except the Japanese masterpiece presented last year, "The taste of tea"...). The melancholic and tasteful piano which comes to punctuate all this offers a breathing and an additional and welcome tone to the whole movie. In short, a film which gives us the desire to love !... to love the love, to love the life, to love the cinema !

al111 - le 23/04/2006

We have already seen the starting point of this scenario a lot of times : an adulterous couple has a car accident, the two lovers are in the coma, their respective spouses meet at the hospital, avoid, brush against each other, light up each other... This Korean film is not made in the sublimated poetic way, like "In the mood for love". It just tells the story, modestly, by small touches but always clearly, and without any affected manner, any lyricism, it manages to give emotion to us, while being closed to the characters. The beauty is not in the decorations, the costumes or the movements of the camera, it is from the staging and the way the actors suggest : a great humanity, universal feelings, a progressive but deep identification. The faces of the two actors, at the beginning austere and ordinary, end up becoming extraordinarily beautiful. A great movie, tender and soft, with the passion certainly hold but vibrating like snows in April...

bobmorane75 - le 21/04/2006

Superb film, all in tenderness, decency and reserve. The staging is neat, the slowness happy, the actors are perfect. All in the movie breathe a moving poetry.

ol75 - le 19/04/2006

APRIL SNOW is a jewel of writing, where nothing is said but suggested with an address which exceeds all what is made in Western cinema - didactic to die for –To the detractors who will advance that this film is slow, I would answer that slowness is a thousand times justified and that is precisely the ingredient which gives an outstanding way to the story and an accuracy to the feelings. Hats off Mr Jin-Ho Hur ! Hats off Asian cinema !

Signed : a cinema lover (of good cinema !)

mimac - le 17/04/2006

Definitely, the Korean cinema doesn’t cease to surprise me. This film all in delicacy, involves us in a dramatic and romantic story. All this can appear as a melodrama, but it’s so well controlled, that we fall for it with great pleasure.

philbleu - le 16/04/2006

Beautiful... it is a beautiful movie. The meeting of a man and a woman that all could oppose. Only the imposture of two dear persons will lead them to discover each other, to love. It’s this way that the movie is shot and played (very well shot /played), with delicacy, reserve and sobriety. The feelings are there in all their reality (neither more, nor less). We walk out of the movie theater, with a feeling of wellbeing, happy. Better than Locataire (camille : it’s a Korean movie of Kim Ki Duk). A must see movie.

offset891 - le 16/04/2006

Splendid. A touching movie, without soppy speech, nor large clichés. Just refine gazes and dialogues. We are captivated ! We must bow to the actors performance : really outstanding.

To be continued ...

[Guest frances]

another great translation from Camille, a fellow BYJ fan from France

Source : Camille's Blog ~ http://toujours-byj.blogspot.com/

samedi, avril 29, 2006

April Snow : some reviews from French spectators part 2 !

From http://www.allocine.fr/film/critiquepublic...ilm=108687.html

Translated from french to english by camille

Lachapelle - le 25/04/2006

Snow in April. Not very probable. As the meeting and love story between the two characters of a film which still captivates you, long time after the last image. It is beautiful, all in sensibility. The feelings are retranscribed in all their complexity. The falsely slow rhythm gives to the actors the possibility to captivate the spectator by a sober, efficient acting. A film to see at all costs.

Lventriloque - le 16/04/2006

Situation at least very funny, highly tragi-comic! That must happen all over the world, with various conclusions... The two persons hospitalized don’t have almost any importance here, we become attached to the "two cuckolds in the same situation, both broken down", the plot becomes so tense that it takes its time, but there is, in this hesitation, this reserve, an ultimate form of decency. A blasting family scene in the middle of the movie awakes us awfully !!! In fact, these two persons take revenge or it’s the nature which helps everything doing well? But it’s not the problem! The snow of April gives a tad poetry to their relationship and the snow road goes to infinity. Cruel, without concessions on the human nature, but very tender at the same time, we say ourselves "and if that arrived to us"?

Laurent_Lenormand - le 14/04/2006

A movie which we leave fascinated, calm and happy. The beginning is a little slow, but because we have to take time to enter the movie. The story is conventional and remains throughout the movie, but on this banal plot Hur Jin-Ho draws a painting all in delicacy, reserve and of sensitivity, quivering of emotion. Gradually, an atmosphere settles. The silence cracks, a soft heat starts to emanate from the movie. We are spellbound, almost without our knowledge. Especially, we never feel attacked. We never have the impression that the director try to catch artificially our interest by some unwelcome show off. All happen by gazes, gestures, sometimes slightly started. It is very moving. And it’s at the same time a visual and auditory beauty (excellent choice of music !) absolutely outstanding. I admit I’m a big nostalgic of Asia, where I lived and where a part of me still remained. Therefore I am not objective, in the case someone can be with a movie. But there, I really needed treasures of energy for not running quickly to buy an one-way ticket for Seoul or Tokyo after seeing the movie. If that is not enough to convince you to go watching it...

JamesDomb - le 13/04/2006

I’ve thought a lot about Truffaut, Sautet (camille : famous French director), in particular of La peau douce with this evocation of an (or more according to some points of view's) adultery and this high sensitivity emanated from long silences, glances of the characters. The Korean film director Hur Jin-Ho collects magic moments of life through the acting of his two fascinated actors, Son Ye-jin and Bae Yong-joon, both luminous and full of grace. The film director belongs to the new wave of Korean cinema and imposes his singular world. April Snow is not a trickling melodrama but oscillates between the heat of feelings and the reserve, the hope and the distress, until the desire and the remorse of its two characters. We think of course of Random Hearts’s scenario of Sydney Pollack but this is at first a real Korean movie, with its philosophy, its gestures and postures, its glances, its unstated things. There is a statement of melancholy, a disappointment face to love which shows through April Snow but also a fear of living without it. The characters have to deal initially with sorrow and anger because of the common betrayal discover. Then the characters look at themselves, think that they are not alone and that they can count on each other to rebuild, until they find that they are in the same situation as their spouses towards whom they were disappointed. Untill reconsidering the behaviour of their spouses. The music of Jo Sung-woo is splendid and manages to give a lightness to the characters’s feelings. A lightness which echoes to the omnipresent snowflakes, reflection of the characters’s state of mind. Snowstorm, confusions of the feelings. Soft snowflakes falling with parsimony, calming down of the characters. April Snow is a movie which takes its time but its rhythm really did not disturb me. I was captivated by the beauty of the actors, the ambiguity and the depth of the story. A true intimate and delicate jewel.

Camille wrote ~~

I particularly like this review, although it’s not written in a literal way, the author just share with us her feelings in a very humorous way. But for me, it’s a kind of review written by real common movie-goer.

From http://www.ciao.fr/April_snow__Avis_912803

Translated from french to english by camille

There isn’t any month to love you

From Nelleling - April 15th 2006

author evaluation : 5 stars

Advantages: It is more than a very beautiful Asian movie, it is simply a beautiful love story.

Disadvantages: My boyfriend has taken my handkerchiefs.

Complete opinion :

When the weather was nice... we locked ourselves in an obscure theatre to see "enfermés dehors” (camille : french movie which the title means lock out) and when it rains, we’re still in the obscure theatre to see a Korean movie at Bercy (Camille : a Parisian movie theatre which screens AS)... 34 screens only project this small cinematographic jewel.

"April Snow" is a movie in 2005 of Hur Jin-Ho, the Korean names give you a desire to take an aspirin ?... me too. No matters for me, the film is terrific. My boyfriend is still in shock, too much emotion. Yes, the cinema, is expensive... especially for the packages of handkerchiefs. "April snow": the sudden impulse of the lovers of love.

The film is released on April 12th 2006...we’ve seen it on April 15th... and we think that it will not remain a long time on our screens for lack of publicity. So here I’m, to try helping this movie...known only by movie lover and in VO please (camille : original version, meaning Korean speaking) because Korean who speaks French... that will be weird.

A movie which lasts one hour and forty five minutes. About Love. Even if that hurts, even if we don’t understand anything any more. A love story as we would not like to live but it’s so beautiful. But all is possible with love. It is not only on cinema....

A man rushes to the hospital, his wife just has a very serious car accident.

A woman sat in front of the operating room, in sobs. Her husband just has a car accident, very serious.

These two victims are in the same car. These two know each other well. Very well. The respective spouses of the two victims break down each one in their own way, a man does not express the same way his sorrow as a woman. Very quickly... they understand ... they were misled by their respective spouses. Betrayal after sorrow. The anger and thousands of questions to ask.

In-Su (Bae Yong-Joon), the misled man (and additionally he works in the spectacle) strikes down by sorrow, shame, anger, incomprehension... he’s beautiful in tears, or when looking after his wife. These feelings are also found in parallel on Seo-Young (Son Ye-Jin).. same shock same fight... they are beautiful, they are honest, they don’t have anything to reproach themselves and they must endure the consequences of their respective spouses during a part of the movie.

Why ? What have they done to deserve that … legitimate questions face to the illegitimate couple plunged in coma.

The car accident caused the death of a very young man. These two adults didn’t only betray the confidence of their spouse... they destroyed the life of a whole family and it is In-Su and Seo-Young who must deal with the consequences of their irresponsible acts.

It is so well filmed... with sublime musics .. atrociously melancholic... we would voluntarily plunge in this nameless sadness.. a very beautiful cinematographic moment. A wonderful moment, moving, full of tenderness. Actors who play so right that we cry (anyway, we did not hesitate to cry, it is a happiness to see a so touching movie)

Beautiful camera shots, the rhythm is rather long, but we’re not bored only one second... we cannot... we don’t want... we want to see, we want to understand how they will end up... they are close... their stories are alike, the geographic proximity brought them closer. Together face to this dramatic event, some moments of extraordinary masochism in this movie shown in a so subtle way... www.prettypictures.fr

Few dialogues. We don’t need them ... Seo-Young who wants to see the other woman in spite of her pain. This curiosity is not reserved to the misled women. My husband’s lover.. how is she ?.

They listen to the messages on their respective cell phones... how to hurt themselves till the end... a desire of self-destruction.... they are on the same wavelength, they can’t sleep... they ask themselves the same questions, same sordid thoughts... they even thought, wished the death of their respective spouse... terribly human. We should believe that love supports better absence or death than doubt or betrayal.

To revenge while having an affair together? Yes, except that there is more than sex in this relation. Love is there between them. The spectators are the witnesses of a new love story which begins.

They don’t ask any question anymore. And we neither. The anger is not there anymore. They love. That does not mean they don’t love their respective spouses any more. Love is complicated. Maybe because of it that love is magical. Like snow in April.

[Guest liezle]

I love the way the French love AS. This is a rare phenomenon that a Korean film gets this kind of reviews.

It's a sweet victory for the AS team. It may not gained box office success in korea but it was very well appreciated by countries such as France and Japan and in some intl filmfests like Toronto, Chicago, San Sebastian, Deauville who are film savvy. And with Japan being the #1 entertainment market in AS made it to the top.

One of my favorite scene in AS. This one pricked my heart

[Guest frances]

~~ this is kind of a very late posting :blush:

just stumbled upon this TIFF (toronto filmfest) enthusiast's blog and he ( a grad student fr Toronto) wrote a nice article on April Snow ~~

http://enviro-boy.blogspot.com/2005/09/april-snow-tiff.html

September 15, 2005 - After taking a day off yesterday, we were back on the TIFF circuit tonight with April Snow. Initially, none of us were too interested in the movie - it was our "backup" - we were supposed to see Brokeback Mountain instead I think. Anyway though, I'm glad we got to see it because it's my favourite TIFF movie so far.

April Snow is a melodrama that focuses on the lives of two strangers, brought together by a car accident. A man gets a phone call while at work and rushes to the hospital, where he learns that his wife is in a coma following a car accident. Waiting outside the operation room is a woman, and we learn that she's there because her husband was in the same accident and in the same car. While gathering their spouses' belongings, the two strangers learn that their partners were lovers. The rest of the movie then shows how these strangers learn to heal from their partners' betrayal and learn to love again...

When the director of the movie introduced the film, he warned us that the film is a little slow. I remember my first thought was "uh-oh"...and he was right, the movie was slow - but I wouldn't have wanted it in any other way. The pace of the movie is slow and it has a very quiet tone to it but what I enjoyed most was how the storytelling gently let the audience relate and learn about the characters. Like one lady said at the Q&A - it's like cappuccino - you have to slowly taste it and absorb it to get the real sense of what it's like.

This movie features two big Korean stars that are really popular in Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong (of course, none of us have heard of them). The audience was also primarily made up of Koreans (mainly middle-aged women), who showered the director with gifts, posters, flowers - you name it. Though I have to admit, the main actor, Bae Yong-Jun, is kinda hot...

Btw, I really like the posters for this movie...

~ end

[Guest t3n5h1_chu_k015h173]

This is my April Snow Special Making Film 외출

[Guest frances]

here are two more April Snow Reviews from French media courtesy of Camille, a BYJ fan from France

From France 2 television :

http://cultureetloisirs.france2.fr/cinema/...19794619-fr.php

translated from french to english by camille

camille : France 2 is the first public television channel and the second by importance in France

April Snow

Of Hur Jin-ho(South Korea) with Son Ye-jin, Bae Yong-joon – Time: 1H45

Hur Jin-Ho (his first feature film Christmas in August was presented at Cannes in 1998 at “la semaine de la critique”) belongs to this new generation of Korean film directors, as Kim ki-duk (Locataires), who know the honours of important international festivals and public success.

April Snow was a big success in Asia.

In-su, lighting director on the concerts, and Seo-Young, housewife, learn that their respective spouses have just had a serious car accident and discover at this occasion that they were lovers.

In-su is upset by this betrayal which he absolutely did not suspect. As for Seo-Young, married after an arranged meeting, she sees her world collapse.

Torn between love and anger, they meet at the bedside of their respective spouses. Gradually, they will come near to each other, search to understand what has happened and finally fall in love.

Whereas Seo-Young approaches this first love with courage, In-su lives it in a guilty way but it helps him to understand his wife and when she awakes...

A very beautiful love story done masterfully. What could have been a simple melodrama is in fact a beautiful moment of cinema.

In spite of a very slow rhythm (which can discourage some) we finally fall ourselves for this ordinary story (discovery of a banal adultery) of this man and this woman, who meet by chance and find love whereas their respective spouses are between life and death, told with a great delicacy and a lot of poetry.

The presence of two beautiful and sensational actors give a lot to the movie.

A not to miss movie.

***********************

From Le Point magazine N°1752 – April 13th by François-Guillaume Lorrain

http://www.lepoint.fr/cinema/document.html?did=177127

translated from french to english by camille

camille : Le Point, like l’Express or Paris Match, is an important and serious weekly French magazine.

Snow in April. Winter in spring. Or the season of dead loves which crosses the season of incipient loves. Pretty title for a man and a woman who meet at the hospital. Their spouses, victims of an accident, are in the coma. They were in the same car. But especially, they were lovers. The two survivors cope by themselves then face their sorrows together. On the same subject, Sydney Pollack, in "Random Hearts", insisted more on the thriller and the discovery of a secret. The Korean Hur Jin-Ho privileges, thanks to some of his good ideas, the feelings of his two neglected persons : anger, pain, desire. Alternating distance and proximity, he practises a soft, quiet, rather seductive romanticism. Less violent and desperate than Hong Sang Soo, less hermetic and ambitious that Kim Ki-duk, here is however a Korean film director who whispers in your ears a small beautiful throbbing music.

To be continued........

[Guest frances]

French reviews of April Snow

From French School of Journalism by Jean-Marie BENOIST

http://www.efj.fr/article.php3?id_article=212

Translated from French to English by Camille

posted in her blog ~ http://toujours-byj.blogspot.com/

camille : I’m very happy that April Snow got good reviews from the students of the French School of Journalism.

The birth of an improbable love and, in a way, forbidden : the topic of April Snow is not new in the cinema. But the new Jin-Ho Hur movie, in spite of some lengths, imposes its delicacy of treatment and tone, helped by luminous actors. Has just learned that his wife had a car accident, In-Su (Bae Yong-Joon) goes to the East coast of South Korea. At the hospital, he meets Seo-Young (Son Ye-Jin), who reveals to be the wife of a man who was also in the car. Looking through their stuffs, they will realize that their respective spouses had an affair.

Joined together at the same and far place, the same hotel, and especially connected by the feeling that they’ve been betrayed, In-su and Seo-Young gradually will get to know each other. From meetings in empty and impersonal halls of the hospital, to hotel corridor, an affection will be born, then a love, which the waking up from coma of In-su’s wife will complicate. On similar plot we could fear a soppy romance with produces regularly the Korean cinema. But April Snow avoids all the pitfalls to evoke, with lightness, the suffering and the awakening of two persons.

Not any important moral discussions : the movie focuses on glances, sketched gestures, on exchanges of short and almost innocent comments but which in fact reveal much more about the feelings of the two protagonists. It is here that all the quality of the interpreters are important. Fragile, and densely human, they give importance to the most harmless attitude by their subtle acting. So, in spite of a slow rhythm (more sensitive in the second part of the movie, after the waking up of the wife), April Snow fascinates. It describes to perfection the flow and ebb of the pain, the loneliness, and the groping cure which accompanies them, evolution criss-cross here with those which leads from the feeling of revenge and betrayal to the acceptance of the two lovers’s relationship, the old and the new ones. A small jewel of delicacy.

For those who take an interest on the renewal of the Korean romantic cinema, locally called hallyu (official Korean website about the subject, but in English), you can watch the movie which has started it : My Sassy Girl, of Kwak Jae-Young. But it is a romantic comedy, not a "suspended" movie, like April Snow or Locataires (whom I had already recommended, but any occasion is good...)

***********************

From : http://www.benzinemag.net/cinema/Aprilsnow.htm

by Patrick Braganti

Translated from French to English by Camille

http://toujours-byj.blogspot.com/

We can bet that people who loved “Locataires” last year will have the same pleasure to watch April snow now, whose common points with Kim ki-duk’s movie are not limited to the staging of a love story.

In-su, 31 years old, lighting director on concerts, and Seo-Young, 27 years old and housewife, meet at the bedside of their respective spouses, responsible for a tragic car accident. By getting back their stuffs and listening to their cell phones’s messages, In-su and Seo-Young discover the love affair of the two victims. Shaken by the revelation, torn between love and anger, they come gradually to share their sorrows. As “Locataires”, the expression of inner and even outer feelings go through very few dialogues. Here, the language is from the body, initially curled up and in tears by the knowledge of the affair, then opening to each other by helping embraces than deliberately carnal. The bringing together of the two rejected persons has already taken the form of a punishment imposed to the two hospitalized people, before becoming more serious until the cruel dilemma for the future of this strange relationship at the possible end of coma of these two. In-su and Seo-Young have therefore all the time to go through a whole pallet of feelings, but concerning also their marriage state. Will they be able to continue to live as before, how to live with this betrayal ? A situation almost incredible, source of traumas and tears however treated with delicacy and tenderness. April Snow is dived in a soft and silky light, till making friendly the hospital and punctuated by a melancholic piano melody.

Because they are young and beautiful, unfortunate victims, we empathize very much with what arrives to In-su and Seo-Young, rejecting into the position of traitor and unfair the adulterous couple, without knowing anything about the nature, the force, even the legitimacy of the other affair. By putting in parallel an extra-marital affair and a "love in progress" outlaw itself by ricochet, Hur Jin-Ho questions the difference between affair and love story. He isn’t sure at all that there is some, the first reserved for other people, therefore depreciated or ridiculed, the second for ourselves, therefore magnified and transcended.

So this love story is beautiful, but perhaps not very moral. In this circumstance, it becomes possible because the preceding one, hidden and revealing an adultery, has existed. For In-su, the life falls and opens a door which he did not even suspect the existence. For Seo-Young married by arrangement, the meeting with In-su has something stimulating and wakes up feelings which she would probably never feel with so much intensity.

Hur Jin-Ho has really his place in the Hallyu, the new Korean wave movie film directors who know at the same time the honours of important international festivals and the reward of public success, as well in Asia as the rest of the world. April Snow seduces by its elegance and its reserve, its poetry to which late and spring snow is undoubtedly not stranger, and especially the interpretation of its actors. After some thoughts and to summarize, April Snow is the development and the happy conclusion of In the mood for love. That’s all what I want to say.

[Guest frances]

~ one more April Snow Review from France

From French newspaper « La Voix du Nord » by Philippe LAGOUCHE – April 12th

http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/loisirs/cinema/0406/125.phtml

Translation from French to English by Camille

posted in BYJ's KOB

Camille : this is one of the most difficult review for me to translate, but I like it a lot.

Romantic South Korean

April Snow ***

WILL WE HAVE snow in April ? For her who loves spring so much, for him that only the winter delights, we should hope for it.

The silence is gold, words just express then evaporate, gazes start praying, movements are suspended, fractured... In spite of atmospheric whims and the risks of life, it is good to plunge in the Korean daily of a Hur Jin-Ho author and director of this movie (his third movie), all in pale lights and ivory faces.

Less talkative, less intellectual than the Woman is the future of the man of Hong Sang-soo, less sensual than Locataires of Kim Ki-duk, but on the other hand addressed to the intelligence, the sensitivity, the poetic and contemplative feeling of spectators having some other reference than television or obscure theatres.

At the beginning, a man, a woman, two actors absolutely splendid. Meeting at the police station and at the hospital, at the bedside of their respective spouses, victims of a car accident. Find out stunned that the man and the woman today in the coma were lovers. So this man and this woman, thrown into confusion, torn between lost and anger will meet, share the same sorrows, the same torments, even more with time. Betrayal, confusion, despair.

An irrational and inconceivable love emerges at a moment we expect the least. Nothing heavy in this movie, all is in the behaviour, slow-paced shots, highly sensitive, in an economic way yearning for the purity of settings, the severity of a staging degreased of any residue, except a too intense musical partition. What could be more beautiful than a flutter of eyelash, a sketched gesture, a whisper, a short breath, what could be more eloquent, more restful especially faced to the useless flows of words in the world.

April Snow, small bud of spring, fragile and precious thing to handle with precaution.

[crysalide]

APRIL SNOW WITH SRT SUBS - Now available at my Club Box

http://clubbox.co.kr/crysalide

[Guest neeetu]

this movie is so sad. I just uploaded it in my CB ^^

http://down.clubbox.co.kr/hachigogo/3w6x6

sub

http://down.clubbox.co.kr/hachigogo/2w6x6

hey i dont knw to read korean..i watch the dramas and movie with english subtitle.... i tried todownload frm this site but i was not able to...something is written in korean & i dont understand ... there is only 1 button and when i click the window closes..... can u help me plzzz.i wish u towatch this movie....plzzzz

APRIL SNOW WITH SRT SUBS - Now available at my Club Box

http://clubbox.co.kr/crysalide

i can find it..but how to download....this is my first time....i dunno how to do .... plzzz can u help me?

[Guest mikal19]

theres a clubbox tutorial i believe in the subforum downloadables. the thread is a sticky so it should be easy to find.

[Guest frances]

From French movie portal Comme au Cinema by Laurence Berger

http://www.commeaucinema.com/news.php3?nom...5&Rub=Critiques

Translated from French to English by Camille

posted in Camille's Blog ~ http://toujours-byj.blogspot.com/

Snow in spring and a love which blossoms again

Hur jin-Ho likes the wavering of the break between seasons. Whether it is Christmas in August (his first feature film title was Christmas In August) or it snows at Easter, his cinema is impregnated by these climatic pertubations which, metaphorically, come to change the sentimental clock of people. April snow is a love story which should never arrive, but which occurs sometimes, like snow in April. Not with the sudden and brutal manner of a hurricane, but rather in the atmospheric depression of a cloudy sky. Two persons, which the fate link together beyond control, go towards each other, by slow steps. Their spouses were lovers, and following an accident, they are plunged in a deep coma. Between sorrow and suffering, anger and incomprehension, between a hotel room and a hospital corridor, this man and this woman will learn to know each other, to share their sadness, to link their forces, and to love in their turn.

Even if the lines seem drawn, Hur jin-Ho does not seek for melodrama at all costs. On the contrary, all is in the ellipse, the eclipse, the little variations of hearts which, in spite of their difficulties, will end up beating in unison. This love is contextual, out of season, it would probably never take place without the tragic event, come to change the meteorological report, and give the winter in the middle of spring. We think a lot of Hong Sang-soo’s cinema, another Korean film director attached to the seasonal fluctuations and their value delicately poetic (The woman is the future of the man, Tale of Cinema). We find there the same temperance of feelings, budding loves which take time to bloom in frost and coldness. An aerial lightness which embraces the weight of silences, the deep pains and the skinned alive.

This snow of April, enchanting and fleeting, is beautiful like a surprise we did not expect. It’s the rebirth of life after a mourning. A cottony bracket in a cursed sky. It falls in caressing snowflakes, brushes against faces and bodies in a forgetting whirl. Certainly, the movie is stretched a little too much on length and is hard to conclude, with repeated and endless ends. But, except this anesthetizing property which may make people who is not accustomed with it drowsy, this beautiful tale of love, snowy and springy, will not fail to move the sensitive hearts to the sibylline beauty of this Korean cinema which can reinvent stories already told. In this case, the impression of already seen is almost a quality...

*******************

~ another nice review and a comparison with a popular & beautiful French film

April Snow and Les Choses de la Vie

From http://dvdtoile.com/Film.php?id=27646&page=2

by Adel –April 30th

Translated from French to English by Camille

Will we have snow in April? The question makes sense in this Korean movie where love decides for the weather and the change of seasons. One day, a man runs to the bedside of his wife fallen into coma after a car accident. At the same time, the same place, a woman comes to visit her husband in the coma too. Soon the lonely spouses understand that they should never meet, and that a love can hide another! Face to the silence of their unfaithful spouses, they will join together, then, with disappointed innocence, become lovers in their turn .

April Snow is a psychological drama with purified melodrama, telling a story of sorrow and love squared. The movie has something alike with Les Choses de la Vie of Claude Sautet ; it evokes the impossibility to choose in love, its way out through the car accident and the confession of an impossible love. As in Sautet’s movie, April Snow gives honour to those who remain, cry, suffer, and fight against sorrow, the bitterness which tints it. But the movie does not use flashback. The action happens here and now, only the moment present is important, because it’s only it which remains. All begin again from there, and it’s there that it’s necessary to compose. To compose, it is what the hurt spouses do: they live with it, and by small gestures extracted from their suffering and by becoming attached to each other. In the manner of the film director who shoots by small touchs and small events the love which will be reborn from its ashes.

April Snow is also a tribute to the continuity of love, the assumed love. It comes close to the subject of Love Streams of John Cassavetes. But the acting differs. It is all in reserve, and follows the movement of the repressed suffering which changes and expresses with difficulty. The text is frugal but powerful, not in the flow. Let’s talk about the scene where the unfaithful wife emerges from her coma; she can finally speak again. Her husband, the principal character, is at her side in the hospital room. His wife asks: "You must have a lot of questions to ask me...?" Silence, the husband answers: "At the beginning yes, but not now." After a moment, he says : "Your lover (whom he calls by his first name) is died." Suspension of noise and time, stupor filmed in large shot of his wife. In the next shot, the husband leaves her room and closes the door with her sobs. He goes towards the window at the end of the corridor, at the edge of which he stays, thoughtful and somewhere else. In the following scene we see him sitting in his apartment among relocation boxes. The narration of this passage is virtuoso and full of emotion. The unfaithful wife is at her turn plunged in sorrow, and the fact of referring to it (in sound off) induces respect and compassion towards her. There isn’t any possible manicheism in terms of feelings.

At last the acting of the misled woman, with a timorous grace of a fragile, chaste flower which displays. No crisis, except one tear (the effect in this related scene is very intense) nor hysteria. But not the life force of a Gena Rowlands, not her charisma in this character of a weak woman. A certain presence, yes, but a tiny bit insignificant or exasperating of abnegation. But this is a matter of moments, taste and moral.

The staging of Hur Jin-Ho is subtle, controlled, with excess sometimes, but still remains efficient : the emotion is at rendezvous. The confusion of feelings remains, as well as the precision which is transposed in this movie. We rather like it perhaps less linear, that things were more ambiguous so they look even more to life. But love sometimes knows where it goes.

As this review talks about some likeness between April Snow and Les Choses de la vie, I would like to explain a little bit about this very famous French movie of Claude Sautet.

Claude Sautet was a very well-known French movie director, on 1969 he became famous with “Les Choses de la Vie” playing by Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider and Léa Massari.

Pierre, architect, 40 years old, with a rather complicated life has just have a car accident. As he lies on the ground, paralysing, he recalled his recent life and his unresolved personal problems: his ex-wife Catherine (Léa massari) with whom he doesn’t speak any more, his son whom he only saw episodically and that he doesn’t understand, and his lover Hélène (Romy Schneider) with whom he is enable to cope with the pressure of their relationship. He had just written a letter to her announcing he wants to break their relation but he had quickly regretted it and was on the way to intercept the letter. Now, dying, he recalls everything and finds the value of the things of life….

The story is told almost in reverse, with an assembled montage of flashbacks. This movie shows a deep understanding of human relationships.

In 1993, Hollywood has made a remake of it : it’s Intersection, playing by Richard Gere, Sharon Stone and Lolita Davidovich.

In case you want to know more about this French director, here is the link for a great article in english I found on the net :

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/dir.../03/sautet.html

[Guest liezle]

thanks frances for the reviews. the overwhelming response of the french to april snow is so amazing. i remember camille said in one of her post that AS got one of the best reviews in france. kudos to AS!

[Guest liezle]

thanks to frances for posting this in BYJ's thread

here's another April Snow update from our Bae sis in France, Camille... thanks a lot sis for the info !!

in her blog http://toujours-byj.blogspot.com/, she wrote that 4 korean films were shown in France so far and they are :

April Snow, A Bittersweet Life, The Duelist and Marathon (looks like little attention was given to this film)

below are the latest rankings from French spectators and film critics collected by Allocine, am important & respected French movie portal.

Les meilleurs films selon les spectateurs http://www.allocine.fr/film/alaffiche_public_gen_page=1.html

Ranking by spectators as of May 18, 2006 ~

the top 33 films currently being shown in France & ranked by French spectators

1.. C.R.A.Z.Y.

2. Transamerica

3. V for Vendetta

4. Antartica, prisonniers du froid (Eight Below)

5. Romanzo criminale

6. L'Age de glace 2 (Ice Age 2 : The Meltdown)

7. April Snow (Oechul) - still doing well since it was shown last Apr 12

12. A Bittersweet Life - shown on May 10

14. Mission Impossible III

18. Silent Hill

25. Da Vinci Code

32. Duelist - shown on May 17

here is the ranking from French Media as of May 18, 2006 -

Les meilleurs films selon la presse http://www.allocine.fr/film/alaffiche_presse_gen_page=1.html

1. Volver

2. Le Caïman (Il Caimano)

3. Truman Capote (Capote)

4. Romanzo criminale

5. OSS 117, Le Caire nid d'espions

6. Enfermés dehors

7. L'Age de glace 2 (Ice Age 2 : The Meltdown)

8. Le Roman de Mildred Pierce (Mildred Pierce)

9. C.R.A.Z.Y.

10. Inside man - l'homme de l'intérieur (Inside Man)

11. Transamerica

12. Jean-Philippe

13. April Snow (Oechul)

14. Sophie Scholl les derniers jours (Sophie Scholl - die letzten Tage)

15. A Bittersweet Life

31. Duelist