[FILM REVIEW] Life is Beautiful (2022)

Life is Beautiful (2022) is a musical romance film that stars Yum Jung-ah, Ryu Seung-ryong, Park Se-wan, and Ong Seong Wu. The film depicts the journey of a woman who discovers she has cancer and takes a road trip to meet her first love from high school.  

Despite wrapping filming in 2020, the film experienced long premiere delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, reported Korea Times. After a nearly two-year-long wait, the film premiered at the 36th Fribourg International Film Festival in Switzerland, and is now ready to take us on a beautiful adventure. 

Facing Hard Truths

We meet Oh Se-yeon (Yum Jung-ah), a frazzled housewife who barely catches her bus in time for a hospital check-up. At the hospital, her husband, Kang Jin-bong (Ryu Seung-ryong), impatiently phones her and scolds her for not taking a taxi. She soon realises she boarded the wrong bus, and hastily gets off at an old cinema, where she reminisces about how she used to often visit the area as a young woman. 

The memory transports her to a musical number in the 1990s — complete with retro outfits, bright music, and the poster for the Hollywood film Ghost (1990) in the background. 

Back in reality, Jin-bong heads to his wife’s appointment without her, and is met with bad news: she has lung cancer, and she only has a short time left to live. Jin-bong is shell-shocked, but when his wife finally arrives, he coldly breaks the news to her and blames her for not taking care of herself enough. 

The Bucket List

Se-yeon heads home, fussing over her children who barely give her a second look. She and Jin-bong decide against telling them about her condition, wanting them to focus on their schoolwork instead.

Meanwhile, Jin-bong attends a work dinner, drowning his sorrows in alcohol. He mourns his wife’s condition in an upbeat ballad, pondering the meaning of life and missing the good old days while stuck in the present. 

Worried about how her family will cope without her, Se-yeon spends a few sleepless nights alone, labeling her children’s vitamins, trying her best to impart all her knowledge before she eventually passes. Because of this, she misses a few chores — which her family reprimands her for — and is hurt by how harshly they treat her. 

Finding First Loves

While tidying up, Se-yeon finds a photo of her younger self (Park Se-wan) with her first love, Jeong-woo (Ong Seong Wu). She thinks about how sweetly he had treated her, unlike her husband. 

Deciding she has had enough of her family’s awful treatment, Se-yeon creates a bucket list of things she wants to do before she passes. One of the things is meeting Jeong-woo again, intent on recapturing the sweet feeling of falling in love for the first time. 

When she tells Jin-bong this, he laughs in her face and refuses. After she insists (and uses his credit card for revenge), he finally agrees, and they set off to find her first love. 

Review

The film takes its audience on a wonderful rollercoaster of emotions, with seamless mood shifts. From the sadness of a terminal illness to the hilarity of the main couple’s endless bickering, you can’t help but be immersed in the drama and empathise with every character. By the end, there wasn’t a single dry eye in the house. 

Of course, with a star-studded main cast, hopes were high, but the actors’ performances exceeded expectations. Yum Jung-ah and Ryu Seung-ryong’s chemistry as a married couple was especially fun to watch. 

This musical extravaganza will not only bring you on an emotional roller-coaster, but also take you on a tour around Korea through the ages.

Needless to say, audiences can be sure to walk out of the cinema with that nostalgic feeling of first love, knowing that life truly is beautiful. 

Life is Beautiful is showing in cinemas now. 

 

Running time: 122 minutes
The Seoul Story’s Rating: 4.5/5

We would like to extend our huge thanks to Purple Plan for the invite! 

Written by: Nicole Descalsota

The Seoul Story – Connecting K-Pop Fans Since 2011 
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