HAPPINESS

Young-su leads a careless and fashionable high life in Seoul but when stricken with liver cirrhosis, his business and love affairs go down the drain. With his live-in girlfriend gone and his club business handed over to his friend, there’s nothing holding him back in the city. He decides to leave the glamorous lifestyle once and for all and retreats to a sanatorium in the countryside in order to treat his illness.

For Young-su, the sanatorium is world-apart from the upbeat and seductive scene he’s accustomed to. It’s a strange place for him to adapt to and even though he got there on his own, he’s reluctant to follow the rules that’ll help improve his condition.

While recovering at the sanatorium, he meets Eun-hee, a fellow patient who helps out at the facility and the two soon form a kinship. Their feelings for each other develop further into love, as if this is the best form of cure for the couple. After awhile, they choose to leave the sanatorium and live together in a small farm house and take care of one another.

One year later, Young-su recovers remarkably due to Eun-hee care and she too looks noticeably healthy as well. Unlike Eun-hee, Young-su finds the stable, steady life with Eun-hee growingly mundane.

Then out of the blue Young-su’s ex-girlfriend Su-yeon and his friend Dong-joon come down for a visit. Young-su starts missing the life he left behind and falls into a dilemma the moment he sees them. After dwelling on this for a bit Young-su reunites with his friends in Seoul, and sees what he’s been missing out. Young-su returns to the countryside home where Eun-hee waits desperately for him, but his feelings for her begin to fade and gets bored of the tedious and slow lifestyle in the countryside. Eun-hee tries her best to accommodate him but finds it difficult to accept that Young-su is returning to his former destructive self. She realizes that she has no choice but to let him go.

After leaving Eun-hee, Young-su repeats the lifestyle he had left behind in Seoul and enjoys the downward spiral life. But soon he feels the void once filled with Eun-hee’s love and care. Not being able to return to the cozy home he shared with Eun-hee, he leaves Su-yeon’s place and checks himself into the hospital. But even at the hospital, he cannot change his habits that he developed over the years and added torment of abandoning Eun-hee forces him to drink and smoke.

The principal of sanatorium comes for a visit and informs him of Eun-hee’s state. Young-su rushes to the rural hospital where she’s under intensive care and knows immediately that she’s on her last leg. Young-su feels waves of guilt but he can’t do anything except hold her hand as she lets out her last breaths.

Distributor: Golden Scene Company Limited

Release date: 30 Oct 2008

Category: IIA

Duration:124 mins

Cinemas:
1/ Palace IFC
2/ Broadway Cinematheque
3/ The Grand