Tune in for Love

A film set in Korea. The year is 1994. Mi-su works in a bakery. Hyun-woo has come out of a children's home. He is looking for work and comes to the bakery. A radio programme is playing there that day. A listener's letter is read out. The two meet. Then they part. From there the film moves through years. 1997, 2000, 2005. They meet again each time. Each time one is ready and the other is not. Hyun-woo comes from a troubled past. He gets involved in something and goes to prison. Mi-su waits, and stops waiting. The country's economy collapses. The crisis of 1997 enters the narrative and work, homes and plans all fall apart. The radio is always there. The same programme runs for years and both of them listen. They write letters. Not to each other, to the programme. What the narrative is interested in is not love but timing: its idea is that two people genuinely wanting each other is not enough, and that life keeps them in different places. The radio has a narrative function. As long as they cannot find each other the programme is the medium and the voices pass through that channel. The tone is melancholy but not heavy. The narrative builds no scenes of catastrophe. The period detail is careful. Cassettes, pagers, the first mobile phones and internet cafés arrive in turn. Kim Go-eun, Jung Hae-in and Park Hae-joon are in the cast. Jung Ji-woo directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes Korean romance and narratives spread across years. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; the film is long, the tempo slow, and the same pattern of missing each other repeats many times.