Amateur Recommendation Hour: On Your Wedding Day

Today’s recommendation is a film that will never win any major honors, will not be on any “top films of the decade” lists, and will likely be disputed amongst film analysis folks like myself as to whether or not it is actually an artistic work that has discernible merit and quality. Collective discovery in art is just as important as it is in the human experience in general, however we must not let that sentiment determine a dogmatic approach to what is good and what is not.

On Your Wedding Day, directed and written by Lee Seok-gun, is a Korean romantic comedy film about the ten year relationship between Hwan Seung-Hee, an high school girl in the middle of a transfer to a new school in area, unfamiliar with her new peers, played by the magnificent Park Bo-young, and Hwang Woo-yeon, an upstart idealistic boy believing her to be his romantic destiny, played by the eccentrically fantastic Kim Young-kwang.

By most metrics this work adheres to many conventions of its genre trappings. This is undeniably true. Objectively speaking, it’s by the numbers approach is uninspired. Obviously I understand why it’s narrative functions as it does but I have to call it like I see it. If you’ve seen any type of Korean romance drama, the story beats will feel comfortable, but very familiar. Depending on who you are, knowing this may either interest you more, excited for the narrative coziness of familiarity or turn you completely away, tired of the structural similarity of an oversaturated genre, this is the subjectivity of art at play, and as you guys know I’m always beating the “there’s a difference between taste and opinion” drum. (Shoutout to all of the drummers out there, you are valid.)

However it is within its character moments that this work shines its brightest and longest. How the main characters relationship builds up over time feels very authentic. The way in which they come together, how they spend their time. The conversations that they have with each other and the dynamic between all of the emotions and situations of their lives that they go through. As time passes and they grow older their relationship changes, self-referential inside humor becomes more prevalent, not too dissimilar from the banter you would have with your own significant other. Social responsibilities and keeping up appearances make way for job opportunities, time away from each other in quiet and isolating reflection, having a dramatic impact on how you choose to move forward or on from the person with which you are coupled.

The tone, beyond a couple of moments here and there when it has to lower itself to the moment, never feels wrought with the melodramatic fluff of it’s serialized and overly long brethren of television romance dramas. It’s light-hearted, lackadaisical demeanor helped endear to its characters further than I would have through a lens full of teardrops and emotional fog. The quirkiness is as you would expect, and while comedy is a wholly subjective beast, I found myself laughing out loud multiple times at this films humorous moments. Where it fully differentiates itself is the pacing with which it is delivered which works fully in tandem with its devotion to tonal consistency that mutually similar works lack.

Boiling all of this down into an interpretation(™) I’ve come to understand that this work is about the longevity of a romantic connection is an overrated idea that society longs for. The true value from any romantic relationship one has with another for any period of time is found under the proverbial hood. The qualities they help foster within you, the influences they have on your life, and the person they help cultivate into a better, stronger, and emotionally intelligent being. Maybe when you’re thinking of them, you go into negative situations with a little more resiliency, maybe you handle yourself with a little more dignity and decorum, and maybe you learn something about yourself along the way.

I have a much more optimistic demeanor when interpreting the world of artistic expression so it is perfectly fair and valid to dispute my claims to the contrary, and while it does lean heavily on established Korean romantic comedy topes at times it also holds a quiet maturity lingering in the background of it’s depiction and imitation of an on and off romance beginning in ones youth, our most vulnerable moments, progressing to young adulthood, an even more hectic and confusing time. And it is the ultimate subversion that left me with a profound respect for the voice with which this work speaks.