Killing Romance

Lee Won-suk’s bombastic musical comedy is a wild ride from beginning to end.

“It’s good!”

Festivals have a habit of indulging a lot in serious dramas, and films that are About something. I get it. You only have so many films over so many days with which to make your points, and raise the issues that are relevant to the themes of the year. But I really, really enjoy it when something different and, most importantly, fun comes on a screen. It’s always a very necessary change of pace, and this year’s LEAFF delivered one hell of a palette cleanser in the form of Killing Romance.

Yeo-rae (Lee Ha-nee) is an actress whose career is suddenly halted after a terrible performance in a huge blockbuster film. Ridiculed by the media, she flees to a fictional tropical island where she meets Jonathan Na (Lee Sun-kyun), a too-good-to-be-true real estate developer, who immediately marries her. Seven years pass, and Jonathan has revealed himself to be an abusive monster, and when the couple briefly return to Seoul, Yeo-rae bumps into Bum-Woo (Gong Myung), one of her biggest fans. Together, they conspire to kill Jonathan and free Yeo-rae.

Lee Won-suk’s movie, in his own words is not one to be dwelt on for too long. While there’s no doubt that his vision contains themes personal to him, and the specific decisions (such as the surprisingly important flying ostrich) would have come from a place only he understands, those are questions that aren’t worth mulling over. The story isn’t all that weird, at its most base form, told as it is like a children’s book by a narrator as its framing narrative, but many of the choices presented will leave you wondering: why?

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes cinema should be baffling, and Lee presents a movie that is equal parts inscrutable yet completely comprehensible. Nothing in this leaves you scratching your head, though you might wonder just why so many things happened the way they do. With directorial context, much of it is due to restriction from COVID which forced part of production to change, and so the story changed. The looseness of a film like this leaves it open to a lot of improvisation, and means you never quite know what you’re going to see next. It turns what could have been a film that was trying way too hard to be weird into one that’s naturally just a bit unhinged.

In a cast of actors clearly all having a blast, no one is enjoying themselves more than Lee Sun-kyun. His Jonathan Na is barely a real person, let alone a credible villain, but there’s so much passion and silly love put into the role that it’s impossible to look away from the oodles of absurd charisma on display. Every line is entertaining, and the chemistry he has with his bodyguard Bob (Andrew Bishop) has birthed a truly noteworthy double act, with Bishop bringing an intimidating wackiness matched only by Terry Crews.

While some of the esoteric stylings are a bit unnecessary – I found the Wes Anderson style opening entirely not in keeping with the rest of the movie – the one thing that brings the movie down is, oddly, its main character. It’s not like he’s bad, per se, or even not fun to watch. Gong Myun does a great job with the character. It’s just that there’s not much to him, and the stuff that does make him interesting, he backs out of almost immediately. It’s his suggestion to kill Jonathan, but when it’s time to actually do the deed he actively tries to prevent it. I get why – he’s just a regular guy – but it’s one thing to not actively want to do harm, and another thing to step in when the incredibly loveable Yeo-rae is about to score a victory against the man who’s been abusing her all these years.

Killing Romance is a black comedy, one that doesn’t shy away from dark themes – though it does hide behind layers and layers of bizarre nonsense, not least of which are the jukebox musical numbers that show up so infrequently that you entirely forget about them until they surprise you again. It’s a good movie that sometimes doesn’t quite know what it is, when it wants to end, or what it wants to do. The film has like three climaxes, and it’s impossible to tell whether it was purposefully planned to be disorienting, or maybe just a result of a movie being shot during a pandemic. It’s a weird bit of fun and one you can just enjoy without thinking too hard about. So why in the world did I just write 700 words on it?

Verdict: Immensely goofy but endlessly entertaining, Killing Romance might deter some of the more weird-averse but it’s a perfect remedy for a world that’s sometimes just a touch too serious.

—–

Overall entertainment: 7/10
Violence: Some cartoonish slapstick, one uncomfortable scene of domestic abuse/10
Sex: 0/10
Fart jokes: 1
Murder attempts: 3
Songs: 5, at most
Peanuts: Undetectable beneath all that basil, apparently

Killing Romance (2023)
Also known as:  킬링 로맨스
Korean

Director: Lee Won-suk
Writer: Lee Won-suk

CAST

Lee Hanee – Hwang Yeo-rae
Lee Sun-kyun – Jonathan Na
Gong Myoung – Kim Bum-woo
Yoo-ram Bae – Lee Yeong-chan
Shim Dal Gi – Bo-ri
Andrew Bishop – Bob