106 minute running time … this is a W.D. By movie, written and directed by Celine Song … not sure how autobiographical it is … girl leaves Korea for Canada at age 12, moves to New York at age 22 or 24, final age in movie is 32 or 34? She’s attractive, she’s smart. Her English name is Nora. She had a childhood sweetheart in Korea that she later briefly connects with at age 22? via a number of Zoom calls (very romantic). Finally he comes to visit her in New York when she is in her early 30s and married. The movie jumps back and forth among these 12 year periods. A story of lost love or what could have been, I guess.
Lots of musical cues in this movie, lots of piano and heartstring stuff. Nora went to an artists’ colony in Montauk at age 22 or 24 where they left the doors open and there were nicely arranged flowers and other still life tableaux mysteriously scattered about. In one scene you see the various artists in attendance which include one gay black man, one lesbian, two bearded guys, and Nora (the token Asian woman). At this equal opportunity artists' colony she met a short, nerdy Jewish guy named Arthur and "seduced” him. She really had to encourage him to make a move because he’s a real nebbish. He also plays video games at age 33 so you know he’s a total loser, despite writing a best seller which is inexplicably titled “Boner.” (Some kind of inside joke?)
[Insert some Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge and Statue of Liberty shots, all of which are required to qualify for movie industry tax credits. The streets are clean and the subway is well lit and sparkling and not filled with crazy homeless people.]
The Korean boy has grown into a strong handsome young man, very sweet and sensitive … when he visits her in New York, Nora and her husband have dinner with him and her little dork of a husband decides to wear a brown Mr. Rogers button-up cardigan over a cowboy shirt to the meal. Nora and the muscular Korean man in fashionably tight shirt have a nice heart-to-heart talk and Nora wonders to herself, what the hell am I doing milquetoasty Arthur whom I haven’t looked at even once tonight?!? She doesn’t say this, but we know she’s thinking it. The Korean guy is more blunt: he asks her to imagine if she had stayed in Korea and they had a mess of pure little Korean children together.
Later she sees the Korean guy off to his Uber to the airport and gives him the chance to sweep her off her feet and bundle her back to Korea (which she really wants), but he wimps out and blows it, so she goes back to Arthur in his brown cardigan and their crummy East Village apartment that costs $4,300 a month and weeps. The End.
