The Classic

It's been another busy week: three homework assignments plus 11 hours spent in lab trying to figure out why I keep getting negative capacitances. The thing with lab is that if everything runs smoothly, it can be finished during lab hours. More often than not, something inexplicable happens and your results are so convincing that you've just proved Newton wrong. But life goes on, despite the obstacles.

I did manage to watch a movie in between all the madness. It's a Korean movie called The Classic. The funniest thing is that I totally misunderstood the movie the first time around. Here's a brief summary of the plot:

Ji-hae and Soo-kyoung are friends attending the same university and both have a crush on Sang-min who is in their drama club. The more clamorous and outgoing of the two, Soo-kyoung, asks Ji-hae to do her a favor - write a love letter to Sang-min. Ji-hae pours out her own feelings for him on paper, but sadly in her friend's name. Touched by the letter, Sang-min is attracted to Soo-kyoung, and Ji-hae, feeling uncomfortable and even guilty, tries to avoid him. And yet by coincidence or by fate she keeps running into him. Ji-hae has lived alone with her mom since her childhood, when her dad unexpectedly passed away. Her mom is now on a trip abroad, and to wile away her solitude she starts cleaning the attic. There Ji-hae finds a secret box, in which her mom (Joo-hee) kept the memorabilia of her first love story of some decades past.

Summer in 1968... Joon-ha is visiting his uncle's home in the countryside during his summer vacation. There he meets Joo-hee and falls in love at first sight. One day, the lovely Joo-hee secretly asks Joon-ha to escort her to a haunted house in the village. Happy and excited to be at her service, Joon-ha meets her at their promised spot. But in an unexpected storm, the two lose their boat and barely manage to return home at a very late hour. Joo-hee gets into big trouble for this incident and is sent back to Seoul. Having parted with Joo-hee without a word of farewell, Joon-ha spends the rest of the summer heavy-hearted. With summer vacation being over Joon-ha also returns to Seoul. At school, his classmate Tae-su asks him to write a love letter to send to a girl. And who would it be but Joo-hee, Joon-ha's dream girl. Unable to confess his own summer love story, Joon-ha reluctantly complies with his friend's request.......

I won't totally spoil the movie in case anyone wants to watch it. But I will say this: The mother (Joo-hee) and daughter (Ji-hae) are played by the same actress. For some reason or another, I missed out on that important detail and that the flashback was of the same person Thus, I spent the whole movie confused. I thought Joo-hee and Ji-hae were the same person, and that she was in love with two guys at the same time. Thus, even though Joon-ha was pouring his heart out to Joo-hee and she seemed to love as well, she suddenly falls for Sang-min. At that point, I was totally flabbergasted. Since when did cheesy romance movies incorporate a plot twist like M.Night Shyamalan's movies? It didn't....the moral of this story? Pay attention to the English subtitles.