My Little Bride

Matinik ka talaga, Kevin.

EORIN SHINBU (My Little Bride)

Starring: Kim Rae-won (Attic Cat) / Moon Geun-young (Tale of Two Sisters)
Director: Kim Ho-joon

Snogging a sixteen year-old girl, yeah, sweet. But hello licking flames of hell. Then, there's also prison. My Little Bride has neither dancing devils nor shiny handcuffs because in Korea, it is legal to marry a minor. You read it right boysies, it is LEGAL to marry a sixteen year-old girl (with the parents' consent, but still) in Korea, or at least, that's what this movie makes us believe. (Insert disclaimer: no cultural judgment here, general queasiness mostly from catholic high school background.)

Sang-min (Kim) and Bo-eun (Moon) are childhood buddies; one is twenty-two and a compulsive flirt, the other's sixteen and is just starting high school where she spends most of her time silently watching a particularly polite softball jock. And as fixed marriages go, they got fixed, and the funnies begin to roll and rock their worlds. Giggling in bed, giggling at underwear, giggling in aisle 4, the first half is giddy with games of hide and seek encounters as their lives begin to overlap. Sex is easily dismissed; it is just not in Bo-eun's mind.

Any tension under the sheets is dealt with tenderness, sweet and uncomplicated.

Bo-eun's slow unraveling is kick-in-the-shin painful. Going steady with the jock, her teen fantasy turns to hop-skipping with adultery. Being a PG comedy, the movie sidesteps the real issues and ends a little abruptly with a cringe worthy speech. But never mind that. Kim, with his sparkly charm, and Moon's feisty innocence collide and merge like atoms: charged, fateful. ***1/2