A Moment to Remember

Su-jin, who works in an architecture office, marries Chul-soo, who works on building sites. She starts forgetting small things, then the stove, then the way home. The diagnosis is early-onset Alzheimer's. The second half of the film is about what the disease leaves of a self. The film is not interested in a love story. It is interested in staying beside someone whose memory is going: Chul-soo becomes the one who has to do the remembering, and the film shows that as daily, exhausting work rather than romance. The form is Korean melodrama: large emotion, turning seasons, hospital scenes and an ending aimed straight at tears. It is not shy about tone. John H. Lee directed. The idea originates in the 2001 Japanese television drama Pure Soul, carried here into cinema. The film drew large audiences in Korea and then had an unexpected box-office success in Japan, among the best results a Korean film had achieved in that market at the time. Son Ye-jin plays Su-jin and Jung Woo-sung plays Chul-soo. Who it is for: viewers who like Korean melodrama and love stories built on illness. Who it is not for: anyone uncomfortable with emotional manipulation. The last half hour goes openly for tears and never pulls back.