<First Love (Cheossalang)> (1993)

Director Lee Myeong-Se
Production Company Sam Ho Films Co., Ltd
Date of Rate 1993-01-18
Date of Theatrical Release 1993-01-22
Running Time 108 min.
Opening Theater Myeong Bo, Myeong Bo Art, Cinema Paradise Hall 1
Genre Melodrama

Staff :
Writer Lee Myeong-Se
Screenplay(Adaptation) Lee Myeong-Se
Producer Park Hyo-Seong
Director of PhotoGraphy Yoo Young-Kil
Gaffer Kim Dong-Ho
Music Song Byeong-Jun
Art Director Cho Yung-Sam

Cast(Actor/Actress) :
Kim Hye-su, Song Young-Chang, Cho Min-Ki

Synopsis

Young-shin (Kim Hye-su) is a freshman art major at a provincial university. Accompanied by an upperclassman, she goes to Seoul to meet Chang-wook (Song Young-chang), the director of a drama club she has joined. The Chang-wook she meets is a grimy, chain-smoking drunk. But Young-shin can't seem to get Chang-wook off her mind. Realizing that she is in love with him, she works up her courage and asks him out in a letter. However, Chang-wook does not turn up at the appointed coffee shop. Frantic, Young-shin waits for him outside his house. That night, she receives a kiss from her first love. After Chang-wook leaves for Seoul to attend his mother's birthday party, Young-shin is unable to suppress her desire to see him. She goes to his house in Seoul, but when she opens the front gate, what greets her eyes is the sight of Chang-wook with his wife and young daughter. Appalled, Young-shin returns home. As if oblivious to Young-shin's feelings, Chang-wook departs as soon as the drama club concludes its performance.

Notes

"In First Love, Lee Myeong-se's dreamlike style finds its most successful vehicle. If Bae Chang-ho's Our Joyful Young Days (Gippeun wuri jeolmeun-nal) was the most romantic Korean movie of the 1980s, First Love would be its equivalent for the 1990s." (Lee Dong-jin) First Love is director Lee Myeong-se's third opus after Gagman (Gaegeumaen) and My Bride My Love (Na-ui salang na-ui sinbu). It is widely viewed as the movie that established Lee's signature style. Using a wide range of techniques and devices that reveal the artificiality of the medium including animation, speech balloons, screen processing, and composite shots the director succeeded in creating a charming and dreamlike film. First Love recounts the story of Young-shin's first love or, more accurately, the story as it is reconstructed in Young-shin's imagination and memory. Consequently, what is important is not the relationship between her and her beloved Chang-wook but her feelings and reminiscences about him. Young-shin's romantic awakening is expressed through the surrounding scenery. A street lined with cherry blossoms in full bloom, the bench at the fog-laden park where they exchange their first kiss, the flower-laden magnolia tree in front of Chang-wook's house the movie paints such scenes like beautiful watercolors, as if affirming that even after the fantasy of first love is shattered, the emotions remain dissolved and unchanging in the landscape. In this way, unremarkable, everyday spaces are colored as sites of romance and nostalgia in her memories, and even trivial gestures take on special meaning. Within Young-shin's memories, the lost emotions of first love resonate with the pathos, longing, and regret one might feel when flipping through the pages of an album of faded photographs. How this might relate to the present is not overly important for Lee Myeong-se: what he aims to depict are the subjective feelings of his heroine as she experiences love and the fanciful world that is generated by them. In Korean cinema, this mode of representing spaces and emotions is Lee Myeong-se's distinctive province and it finds its most apt expression in First Love.

Afterword

Famous for his perfectionism, Lee Myeong-se demonstrated his tenacity by having the set rebuilt twelve times before he was satisfied with it.

Director Bio: Lee Myeong-se (1957- )

After graduating from the film department of the Seoul Institute of Arts, he worked as a production assistant to director Kim Soo-yong. After his discharge from the army in 1983, he worked as an assistant director to such directors as Hong Pa, Kim Jeong-il, and Bae Chang-ho until 1988. In 1989, he made his directorial debut with the film, Gagman (Gaegeumaen), which is considered one of the most unique films in Korean cinematic history. He used a wide variety of visual techniques and created a unique aesthetic style by incorporating even the most trivial of details - such as the props - as an essential part of his films. He is without doubt Korea's greatest cinematic stylist. His most important works include My Bride My Love (Na-ui salang na-ui sinbu) (1990), First Love (Cheossalang) (1993), Affliction of Man (Namjaneun goelo-wo) (1994), Relentless and Ruthless (Injeongsajeong Bol Geot Eopda) (1999), and Duelist (Hyeongsa) (2005).