Purely Joyful Movie!

not horrible nor great

Absolutely amazing

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

We look for the perfect love for our whole life since we start to understand the need of love, meaning of love, meaning of having someone to care for.. think of all day and die to meet up... What if that person comes from future or past.... No meeting no nothing just some letters, handwriting, different dates and smell of the person.... and still your heartbeat can't be tamed... your eyes wants to see this person, wants to see this person's world. Yes that's just the kind of love you find in 'il mare' AKA 'Siworae'

Spawning a Hollywood remake 6 years later, THE LAKE HOUSE (2006), a star vehicle for Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, IL MARE is an emblem of the "pure romance" sub-genre from Eastern Asia, typically in Japan and South Korea around millennium, aiming to the incorrigible romantics, whereas love transmits in its most unpolluted form between two beautiful-looking youngsters, a form eclipses puppy love among adolescents, and imbues a more substantial connection of limerence between two people. In this case, what makes IL MARE a critical standout is its inventive concept to present "time" itself as an unlikely obstacle between two lonely souls Sung-hyun (Lee) and Eun-ju (Jun).The fantasy premise is that, through a magical mailbox, Sung-hyun, a young architect in 1997, receives a letter from Eun-jun from 1999, who has just left the beach house, aka, Il Mare, which Sung-hyun stays now, and moved into a new apartment in town. The house is a gift from Sung- hyun's estranged father, and he is its first occupant, so clearly, he receives Eun-jun's letter from a nearer future, 2 years later exactly speaking.This uncanny communication enlivens both Sung-hyun and Eun-ju's lonesome existences, they exchange their stories, both have experienced a recent breakup, with some not-so-serious time- altering happenstances (e.g. collect a lost Walkman in 1998 and send it back to 2000) to bring about their mutual affections. Guaranteed a slow pace with an intrusive deploy of soft-focus aesthetic (if not a bit televisionary) to fabricate a dreamlike co-existence of how perfect they are made for each other, experience their pastimes in two paralleled universes, separately but vicariously accompanied by each other, Lee Hyun-seung's fairy-tale regrettably slumps into a cloying one-trick pony after the midstream, when the novelty runs dry, and some default plot-holes emerge.One might wonder, since Sung-hyun can regularly meet an unwitting Eun-ju in 1998, why he chooses not to get to know her in person, using the Walkman as a silence-breaker for instance. No, he would rather communicate with a future version of her and laments in his time-line, that the present version only reckons him like a stranger, but in fact, he is a total stranger to her, what does he expect? A more nagging resistance is that, it never occurs to Eun-ju that she should look for Sung-hyun in 2000, not until the moment arrives solely for the convenience of a major plot device, which is narrowly plausible but too conniving to consummate a satisfactory crescendo.The two leads are not given too much to act since the narrations of their letters take a big chunk of the story, and most of time, they are acting against themselves under a veneer of affected pretty- people-entrapped-in-the-loneliness narcissism with schmaltzy songs in the background, although Jun Ji-hyuan exhibits a tinge of sophistication at a rather young age of 18, augurs her soon-to-be- acquired mega-star popularity not just in her motherland.

Imagine the story from Love Letters adapted to the world of speculative fiction, and you have a fair idea of what Il Mare is like. The concept is novel and refreshing (at least until other filmmakers started copying it) - a young man and woman share the same lake house, except at different times. They're separated by a wrinkle in time, and communicate through an antique mail box. The concept is contrived, of course, but the gimmick offers a novel viewpoint on the issues of time and fate. It makes little sense to view the film through the lens of logic. Rather, it offers a cunning "what if"- where characters travel through an alternate time, almost meet, but isolated from each other by each other's daily lives. This soft-hued focus bypasses the idea of using their situation to pick lottery winners, or bypassing the bumps in life's more difficult roads. But it does try to illustrate how people "unstuck in time" can support and love despite their separation. Love Letters may be more logically consistent, but Il Mare is subtler and sweeter.

Unlike a past message someone wrote about how he didn't like the ending, and it would had been better if Sung-hyun died would had been a mistake. It would had made the prev 100 mins seem pointless. There wouldn't be a point for this celestial matchmaking if the main character just died at the end.I understood the ending with Han Sung-hyun getting the letter in time, with instead of meeting Kim Eun-ju at the beach as planned, he decided to catch her as she was moving out which is the reason why she didn't remember him. Even though it would had been more rational if he just waited, b/c now he will come across as a crazy person. Plus it would look more romantic if they met on the beach where they intended.The part I didn't like (BTW major MAJOR SPOILER) is that if all this Twilight Zone stuff didn't come into play, Sung-hyun would had lived. The movie made fate seem like a deranged meddler by causing the rift in time to kill Sung-hyun only to have Eun-ju prevent it so she could realize that she was in love with him. I believe the screenwriter thought closed-mindly about that when he could had thought more outside the box. It would had caused more intensity and drama if Sung-hyun died in an accident which had nothing to do with Eun-ju and she suddenly remembers the tragedy back in 1998 and warns him.