[HanCinema's Film Review] "Love at the End of the World"

Ja-yeong (played by Han Da-gam) is a woman in an abusive relationship. One day, having seen the aftermath of one fight too many, Ja-yeong's daughter Yoo-jin (played by Kong Ye-ji) decides to take matters into her own hands. The issue of patricide is mostly glossed over as Ja-yeong is able to legally protect her daughter with a defense that might-or-might-not actually be true. But to be entirely honest the backstory of "Love at the End of the World" is kind of completely irrelevant as the film instead slowly delves into its own Lolita Complex, where Yoo-jin tries to set her mother up with nice gas station manager Dong-ha (played by Jo Dong-hyuk), on whom Yoo-jin herself has a slight crush.

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The main artistic downfall of "Love at the End of the World" is that it makes the mistake of admitting that a sexual relationship between a stepfather and his barely legal daughter is in fact morally wrong. Now there's a sentence I feel immensely dirty having had to write. That's the problem with the deification of art form in general, is that the best artistic ideas are frequently the most morally repugnant ones.

Although aesthetically too the presentation in "Love at the End of the World" isn't exactly great. If you're in this for the sex scenes I'll warn you up front- there are exactly three, and they're all near the end. They also weren't at all fun or erotic, precisely because the pedophilic undertones are rather difficult to ignore. "Love at the End of the World" basically consists of Yoo-jin and Dong-ha debating whether to admit to their mutual attraction until finally, guility giving in.

They don't do this with words. At least not straightforwardly. Pretty much all of the passion and sensuality in "Love at the End of the World" is expressed through performances so incredibly subtle I'm not sure whether the acting was good or bad. The thing is, I would not expect real-life people engaged in these kinds of relationships to be terribly good at expressing themselves explicitly. This is why academics love Humbert Humbert so much. He's good at expression, and that's all that really matters in storytelling.

But even from an apologist standpoint "Love at the End of the World" is lacking in nearly every conceivable way. The music absolutely drove me nuts. All of it sounds like it came straight from a synthesizer, and that repetition does not go along well with the rather repetitive nature of the story. The only real interesting dramatic question is if or when Ja-yeong will figure out what's going on with her husband and daughter, and how she'll react.

For what it's worth the ending is fairly effective in that respect. "Love at the End of the World" is ultimately a classic case study in how a person can get what they want and still not be happy. It's not that the ending is even all that tragic necessarily. It's just that once the shock has worn off, and the initial throes of passion are over with...what exactly is a relationship anyway, when from the beginning the communication wasn't really that good?

Review by William Schwartz

"Love at the End of the World" is directed by Kim In-sik and features Han Da-gam, Jo Dong-hyuk and Kong Ye-ji.