Il Mare

Eun-joo, moving out of a glass house by the sea, leaves a letter in the mailbox. Sung-hyun, who has just moved in, receives it. They begin corresponding and realise two years separate them: one lives in 1997, the other in 1999. Lee Hyun-seung directed. Jun Ji-hyun plays Eun-joo, Lee Jung-jae plays Sung-hyun. The title is the house's name; the glass structure by the water is the story's only fixed point and the place that joins the two times. The film offers no science fiction explanation. Why the mailbox works this way is never asked; it is set down as a rule to be accepted, and the energy goes to the feeling instead. The pace is slow, the dialogue sparse, the empty space generous. It is typical of the quiet register of Korean melodrama in that period. Hollywood remade the story in 2006 as The Lake House with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Who it is for: viewers who like slow, melancholy Korean melodrama. Who it is not for: anyone looking for logic; the premise rests entirely on acceptance.