Back from a month or so of no activity on my blog, I’m gonna start writing reviews again about Korean films and dramas I’ve watched recently.

There’s a pretty long list I have at the back of my head, so without further ado, I’ll start with the latest one I’ve just watched last night. It’s a Korean-Vietnamese movie titled ‘Lala‘ (also known as ‘Live again, Love Again‘) starring San E, Jung Chaeyeon and the Vietnamese actress, Chi Pu. I don’t know who Chi Pu is, but I watched the movie since it looked interesting based from the title.

The Story

G-Feel (San E) is a popular K-pop composer who is currently experiencing a slump in his career because of his recent break up with Yoon Hee (Jung Chae Yeon). G Feel still has feelings for her, but thinks her love for him is the one suffocating him, only to find out too late how important Yoon Hee is to him when he learns of her death in Vietnam.

Heartbroken, G-Feel is even more unmotivated to work on his songs. His friends try to cheer him up and give him back inspiration, but coincidentally finds what he’s been looking for through a song uploaded on Youtube by an amateur artist. Determined to use this music for his new song, he goes to Vietnam with his entourage to find the composer and there he also meets the tour guide, Mi, who actually happens to be the composer of the song that has attracted him.

Review:

At first I was actually intrigued as to how the story would evolve, considering I’ve tried reading the plot and thought it will go the same direction I was thinking of: G-Feel would go to Vietnam to find the composer of the piano piece he found on Youtube and after some time recognize her upon seeing her play the piano (since there are many scenes where Mi is seen playing the old piano at the antique shop). He would get to know her, find her interesting and ask her to come with him and teach her the hoops of being a real composer in Korea and in the process they would fall in love. Mi will achieve her dreams and G-Feel gets a second chance at love in the form of Mi, which is I think the most win-win situation for this movie and what I thought would greatly fit the title ‘Live again, Love again’. ‘Cause who wouldn’t think they’d eventually fall in love with each other when the title says it?

But sadly, the reality of this movie is tragically done compared to what I have imagined. It goes like this: G-Feel is a renowned composer, but he hides under the identity of one of his best friends. He’s depressed and not really happy with his life so he doesn’t go out of his house.

But Mi, being the dreamer, though have not seen him, is actually infatuated with G-Feel, so she uploads videos of herself on Youtube to become popular and one day meet him. While at it, her keyboard gives up on her, so she needs to stop for a while to have it repaired. She continues to work at a local cafe in the morning and while daydreaming of something weird, she coincidentally meets Yoon Hee, a regular at the shop who always buys milk from them. Yoon Hee’s the kind of character that’s gentle and always smiles so you won’t ever expect her to do anything unlikely.

Meanwhile, G-Feel is trashing all his other opportunities in Korea because he doesn’t have any inspiration at the moment. His friends back him up and leaves the company he’s working for. Then after some time, they all learn that Yoon Hee is dead. She apparently jumped off at Saigon River and drowned.

Mi continues to have strange dreams of a lady playing a certain tune and a soldier finding this lady in the process. She repeatedly sees the same dream every time she sleeps and eventually the video she uploads on Youtube actually becomes her playing the same song she kept hearing through her dreams.

G-Feel accidentally sees the video Mi uploaded and rearranges it to sound the way he wants. The only problem is that he doesn’t know exactly who this composer is, so he messages Mi to buy her music. He eventually says that he wants to meet her, but by the time he decides to go to Vietnam, it’s because he wants to actually find out what happened to Yoon Hee. By coincidence, there he meets Mi as their tour guide not knowing that she’s actually the girl behind the piano tune he heard from Youtube.

They go on trips with fantastical views in Vietnam until G-Feel’s entourage actually has too leave because G-Feel is being accused about being a cheater and not a genius back in Korea. After that, you’ll never hear about his friends. But anyway, once you finish the movie their characters doesn’t even do any impact to the story, so I honestly think that there was no point of them having a really huge presence at the beginning and middle of the story.

Then on Mi’s end of the story, someone tells her–from the antique shop she’s been playing the old piano from–that every music instrument has a soul and that it has a soulmate. Later, Mi continues to dream again of the lady in her visions and this time Mi finds that the lady actually looks so much like Yoon Hee and the soldier looks so much like G-Feel. That’s when she figures she must have been seeing those visions to become Yoon Hee’s messenger–whether it was Yoon Hee from the past or present. Since, she is a random person with some sort of connection with Yoon Hee, she must have been chosen to play the piano piece the Yoon Hee from her vision was playing, so G-Feel would be able to hear it and eventually so G-Feel knows how much Yoon Hee loves him. The end!

In a nutshell, the movie’s storyline is actually all over the place and to be honest I’m not even sure if there’s a point to this movie. Sorry for being brutally honest but now that I’m done with the movie my eyes were opened to a couple of realizations:

(1) The title is very misleading–there’s really no point putting up that kind of title if G-Feel did not find another chance to love someone or live an even better life or if Mi’s crush didn’t even turn to something fruitful when she met G-Feel by accident or if her aspirations didn’t even bear results throughout the film;

(2) Mi’s story is actually nice and she’s tolerable to a point so I find it a waste that her potential love line with G-Feel couldn’t even start;

(3) I really thought that her visions would lead to a little mix of fate-fantasy themes in the film, but sadly even why she dreams of that lady or of Yoon Hee (basically the present Yoon Hee who died is a reincarnation of the lady in her dreams) wasn’t well explained. Why she was chosen to deliver the song to G-Feel is vague as well. I thought it would be because she’s the reincarnation of that lady in her dreams, but then it will make no sense because the lady looks so much like Yoon Hee and she’s already dead. Add the fact that Mi has little to no deep connections with Yoon Hee, so why her? It’s just so random. That I find Mi’s character a little pointless too. You can remove her from the big picture and I’m sure the story will go on without her. It can be any random lady on Youtube who played that tune, honestly.

(4) The revelations were done while the movie was about to end, so again, it became meaningless. It doesn’t do any impact, because you know that it’s gonna be revealed that way before it happened. G-Feel found out Mi is the composer of the song, but so what? It was never revealed to him the fact that Mi was actually dreaming of the past Yoon Hee, so he won’t know the song was actually made for him or something like that. And that it was made to tell him Yoon Hee’s true feelings for him in a way. So, how is he going to somehow move on? That wasn’t even decently played out in the film.

(5) I was actually looking forward to Mi’s reaction when she finds out that the guy she’s actually helping tour around the city is G-Feel, who she has a crush on. But do you know that’s never gonna happen in the film? Because, though Mi introduced herself on their first meet there was no indication G-Feel introduced himself to her ever. If he did then wouldn’t have Mi acted so flustered? Mi must have only figured out he’s G-Feel when he sent a message to her at the end of the film, saying, ‘It’s you’. Then that’s it.

(6) Though G-Feel was so interested in Mi’s song, that subplot again met a dead end. He did not even intentionally try to find her. He found out Mi was the composer by accident. There was no saying too that he bought the song or not.

(7) There was so much build up at the beginning that will make you really interested at first, but the excitement dies down once you’re in the final 30 minutes of the film because no development happens. Basically, the story just revolves around G-Feel realizing how actually important Yoon Hee was too him when it’s already too late. You will not see any growth with his character. Just him wallowing about his dead girlfriend, eating in Vietnam, and touring around. On the other hand, you will not also see Mi fulfill her dreams because she’s still a server at the cafe she’s working at by the end of the story who owns the old piano in her house. I think the real winner here is Yoon Hee’s character, because though the reincarnation dies once more, Mi’s able to realize the meaning of the song and Yoon Hee’s piano with a tragic history to it ends up in her possession, so basically everything about this film revolves around her.

(8) I’ve endured the flashbacks, but there’s just so much repetitions of the same visions throughout the film that I eventually got exhausted and just waited for the ending, which was not even worth it. Let’s just say 50% of this film was dedicated for those flashbacks.

Rating:

Let me get this straight. Overall, I’m going to say that the movie’s bad. The absolute logic is little to none. I’m not even sure if this is a story or just a fragment of it, that’s why many things are not making sense. But if you’re going to watch this film, it will certainly affect your emotions because it’s so melancholic and tragic to a point that you’ll have your own realizations about it and will only later realize the too many flaws it has.

I’m not saying though that you shouldn’t watch it. I mean, compared to other badly done movies, this one isn’t as annoying. Who knows if you might have a different perspective about it. Just please don’t hate me for having these thoughts.

Anyway, rating it, I’ll give this movie a 2.1 out of 5.