If money problems can force people apart, they can also bring them together again. At least that is the premise of Lee Yoon-ki‘s My Dear Enemy, a low-key romance that uses the collection of an overdue personal loan to initiate a will they/won’t they situation between two former lovers. The growing problem of debt has been explored in a range of South Korean films in recent years: Yang Ik-june’s Breathless (2009) is a tough drama concerning a violent debt collector, while Shin Geun-ho’s Romantic Debtors (2010) is a madcap comedy about a financially-beleaguered police detective who must deal with a persistent credit collection agent. If those films are positioned at opposite ends of the commercial spectrum, then My Dear Enemy sits somewhere in-between: light and loose, but favouring a thoughtful approach to money woes over easy laughs. One year ago, charming ladies man Byung-woon (Ha Jung-woo) borrowed $3,500 from then-girlfriend Hee-su (Jeon Do-yeon), who eventually decides to find her ex-boyfriend and demands that the debt be repaid by the end of the day. The now-homeless Byung-woon is penniless, so he is forced to take out a series of small loans from other people in order to accumulate enough cash to pay Hee-su back. This necessitates a long day as Hee-su drives Byung-woon around Seoul to various residences and workplaces to make sure that he does not slip away with a false promise of repayment. Shin definitely needs the money, but she possibly has other reasons for suddenly tracking Byung-woon down.
In terms of presenting a cinematic tour of an East Asian metropolis, My Dear Enemy could be considered as the South Korean equivalent of Satoshi Miki’s delightful comedy Adrift in Tokyo (2007), in which a cash-strapped student debtor is taken on a voyage of self-discovery around the Japanese capital by an unusually sympathetic loan shark. Both films use their respective cities as a backdrop for timely introspection as characters find themselves at a crossroads while the sights of Tokyo and Seoul gradually achieve resonance. Byung-woon and Hee-su travel around Seoul as he tries to scrape together the money from various friends – of which he has many, including women to whom he may offer more than just small talk – with their journey taking in a range of uptown and downtown locations: the rooftop of a major corporation, an apartment in a modern complex, an eatery with expensive décor, a neighbourhood school, a suburban biker party and a less affluent area where Byung-woon is reduced to borrowing cash from a single mother. To someone who has not visited Seoul, My Dear Enemy may appear to utilise a wide range of spaces around the city, but most of the scenes were reportedly shot in the Yongsan-gu district. Nonetheless, a varied use of locations ensures that the film appears to cover much of the modern cityscape from the commercial centre to residential areas. My Dear Enemy is beautifully shot by cinematographer Choi Sang-ho, whose crisp aesthetic effortlessly captures Seoul from early morning to dusk.
While the city of Seoul plays a crucial role in mapping the development of the central relationship over the course of one day, this is essentially a two-hander and the strength of My Dear Enemy is the interplay between its leading players. Ha and Jeon naturally inhabit recognisable characters whose situations are all too relatable in a post-recession world defined by uncertain economy; Hee-su is practical and largely unsmiling, intent on recovering Byung-woon‘s debt even if it means driving him to the home of every acquaintance in his contacts book, while he is a laid-back optimist, down on his luck due to failed business ventures but happy to pass the time at the race track, or in the company of others, until good fortune comes around again. Of course, there is more to both characters and their public demeanours than initially meets the eye. Hee-su is clearly lonely and seeking reconnection with someone who once offered the possibility of a meaningful relationship, so she has resorted to calling in his marker as a means of catching-up, while Byung-woon is surely aware of how hard it is to climb the social-economic ladder when you lack a permanent address or start-up capital. Their circumstances represent a South Korean society where economic conditions are making life increasingly precarious for young professions in the big city, but Lee is more interested in human connection than the credit crunch and instead shows how Hee-su is reminded of why she was once so attracted to Byung-woon.
While most romances hinge on chance encounters or grand gestures, My Dear Enemy revolves around shared history; Hee-su is still charmed by Byung-woon’s playful nature, yet behaves coldly towards him for much of the day as his ability to win over anyone in his social orbit may have been the cause of their break-up. The screenplay by Lee and Park Eun-yeong, working from a story by the Japanese writer Asuko Taira, sensibly favours exchanges over exposition, allowing the audience to make assumptions based on behaviour rather than being bombarded with a series of belated recriminations. Hee-su‘s manner varies from business-like to passive-aggressive, suggesting that subsequent relationships could have also failed, making Byung-woo seem like the ‘one that got away’ by comparison, or that pursuit of professional success (she dresses well and drives a new car) has left her perpetually single. Byung-woon is easy-going and talkative, but there is a melancholy quality to the manner in which he recalls how happy Hee-Su appeared to be when she ended their relationship that hints at thoughts of what could have been. Even the matter of monetary debt is seen from more than one angle, in that it is certainly financial burden, but can also be a means of maintaining ties to another person in an increasingly isolated modern landscape. My Dear Enemy is at once realistic and whimsical, a rare film that finds its characters at their lowest economic or emotional points, yet results in an upbeat coda without any sense of contrivance.
John Berra
My Dear Enemy is showing as part of Love Will Tear Us Apart, a Japan Society retrospective of films about twisted relationships from Japan and Korea that will be held in New York from March 2-18, 2012. John Berra will be a Guest Speaker at some of the screenings. Full programme details can be found at the Japan Society website:
http://www.japansociety.org/page/programs/film
Bio
John Berra is a Lecturer in Film Studies at Nanjing University and the editor of the Directory of World Cinema: Japan (Intellect, 2010/2012). His essay on Kim Ki-duk’s Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring has been published in The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology (Strange Attractor, 2011). John has also contributed entries to World Film Locations: Tokyo (2011), essays to the Madman DVD releases An Actor’s Revenge and Seven Films by Ozu Yasujiro, and regularly reviews films for Electric Sheep and VCinema.
