Nothing Serious

Thirty-two-year-old Woo-ri is a journalist whose work is going badly; his editor asks him to write a relationships column. Twenty-eight-year-old Ja-young tells the people she meets on a dating app from the start that she wants nothing serious. The two match on the app. Woo-ri begins writing about their first meetings without permission and gets a column out of it. Ja-young does not know. The relationship goes somewhere neither of them planned. Jeong Ga-young's film breaks the shapes of Korean romantic comedy; the narrative takes not romance but the fear of forming a relationship as its subject. The dialogue is blunt, and the talk about sex is unusually direct for mainstream Korean cinema. Son Seok-koo plays Woo-ri and Jeon Jong-seo plays Ja-young. Who it's for: Viewers who like Korean romantic comedy, dialogue-driven narrative, and unconventional relationship films. Who it's not for: What Woo-ri does is ethically indefensible and the film does not take that seriously enough. The resolution is also easy.