Kim Young-kwang goes from boy to man in On Your Wedding Day

by Dramaddictally

Welcome to K-Movie Night — a once-a-month feature where we microwave some popcorn, put on a face mask, and get cozy with a Korean movie from yesteryear. With so many films finally streaming (with subs!), now is the time to get caught up on all those movies we missed featuring our favorite drama actors.

Each month, we’ll pick a flick, write a review, and meet you back here to discuss whether or not it’s worth a watch. Super simple. All you have to do is kick up your feet and join us in the comments!

 
MOVIE REVIEW

For this month’s movie, I cozied up with Kim Young-kwang. Would you believe me if I told you I’m not stalking him? It’s just that, since Call It Love concluded two weeks ago, I feel a gaping hole in my heart that’s about 187 cm tall. Filling it with past dramas is one thing, but I thought adding a movie to the mix might just give us all a boost, so we can get on with our post-Call It Love lives.

Billed as a rom-com, On Your Wedding Day was the easy, breezy summer hit of 2018. Both leads received award nominations for their acting chops, and Kim Young-kwang even took home Best New Actor and Popular Star awards. Since I missed it on release, I figured now was a great time to see what all the fuss was about.

The first thing to note about this film is that it’s not really a rom-com. It hits a lot of the notes (in formulaic fashion) but at the end of the day this is a coming-of-age story. And it’s that beautiful twist in the film’s last quarter that sets it apart from other romances.

We open by meeting our male lead HWANG WOO-YEON (Kim Young-kwang) in the present day, where he’s a PE teacher and all-around advice-giver to his adolescent students. He’s just received a wedding invitation from the woman who was the love of his life, which gives us a reason to jump back in time and take a look at how that relationship was won and lost.

The first thing we learn about Woo-yeon is that he’s a storyteller. And the film is structured so that he can look back on his life by telling his students the story of his first love. The theme here is that love makes the impossible possible, as we go through the phases of Woo-yeon’s life and see what he’s overcome.

This takes us all the way back to 2005, when Woo-yeon is a high school senior and our leading lady, HWAN SEUNG-HEE (Park Bo-young), has just transferred to the same school. (On a playful note, “hwanseung” means “transfer”).

Our two leads hit it off immediately, cutting class together for tteokbokki and pretending to date so all the boys will leave “the new hot chick” alone. But it’s not long before their pretend relationship turns real — which is what Woo-yeon wanted from the moment he saw her.

This first phase together is sweetly funny, and full of teenage hormones, with Kim Young-kwang embodying an adorably immature student (who’s a little too hot to be such a dork). But it also feels somewhat instrumental in setup and superficial in emotion as their puppy love comes to an abrupt end when Seung-hee changes schools yet again.

Two years later, with no contact in between, Woo-yeon stumbles on Seung-hee at a university in Seoul and decides he should become a college student too. The joke here is that he’s a terrible student who went straight to work after high school, and we get a Rocky-esque montage as he preps to enter a top university. But remember: love makes anything possible.

Woo-yeon moves to Seoul where he not only attends the same school as Seung-hee, but lives in the same boarding house. Much to his chagrin, the love of his life already has a boyfriend. The antics that follow as he tries to steal her away are the lull in the movie’s midsection. As the story is told entirely from the male perspective, there’s some crude humor and low-level bro-ish violence — although, to be fair, the jokes occasionally hit. Woo-yeon’s friend group delivers the brunt of the comedy, with Kang Ki-young as the hilarious highlight.

I won’t be giving anything away to tell you that our hero does not succeed in winning over Seung-hee, and it’s another six years before they meet again. This time, he’s the one in the relationship and she’s single. But it only takes a few rom-com-style mishaps before he’s breaking off his prior attachments and dating Seung-hee. This is where the film gets reinvigorated as we watch these two laugh, kiss, argue, and walk in the rain.

It’s also where it begins to take on a deeper theme, as we watch our hero succumb to an injury, be unable to work as a PE teacher, and lose hope in planning for the future. He’s finally attained what he wanted (i.e., Seung-hee), but he begins to feel a sense of regret because it was in his recklessness to win her over that he injured himself and fell behind in his career.

Seung-hee is crushed by the idea that Woo-yeon would blame her when he hits rough patches in his life. As she points out: he made his own choices. She doesn’t want to be with him knowing he might resent her later, and this directly leads to their breakup.

This moves us into the present, where Seung-hee is marrying someone else, and comes to tell Woo-yeon in person about her engagement. I won’t give away the ending, but it’s the film’s last half hour that gives us poignancy, hope, and the lesson that love does indeed make the impossible possible — but not always in the way you think it will.

Overall, this is a light watch, high on visuals and low on novelty. With all its sections sewn together, the tone waivers a bit and certain phases feel underdeveloped. This is a case where a multi-episode drama might have actually served the story better — but the format works to land the movie’s message, which is all about how we grow up and the people who help us get where we’re going.

While it has funny moments and sweet scenes, don’t go in thinking you’re getting a classic rom-com or you may be disappointed. But, if you want a thoughtful take on what happens after you attain love, then I’d say, give it a stream. Kim Young-kwang is pretty from start to finish, but it’s the coming-of-age message that’s the true beauty here.

Join me in May for the next K-Movie Night and let’s make a party of it! I’ll be watching More Than Family (2020) and posting the review during the last week of the month.

Want to participate in the comments when it posts? You’ve got 3 weeks to watch! Rather wait for the review before you decide to stream it? I’ve got you covered.

 
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