Killing Romance from Director Lee Won-suk is a riot. More specifically, it is a ‘Wes Anderson’ inspired 106 minutes of a story which gets weirder and more unpredictable as it unfolds. Straight from the start Killing Romance is bizarre and chaotic but in a really, really great way. It’s slick, bright and aesthetically pleasing.
Yeo-rae (Lee Hanee) is a top star. When her latest movie (and bad acting) exposes her to ridicule, Yeo-rae runs to Qualla Island in a bid to escape from reality, whereupon she meets and is saved by Jonathan Na (Lee Sun-kyun). The couple get married, and Yeo-rae retires from show business. We are then introduced to Bum-woo (Gong Myung), a member of Yeo-rae’s fan club and a long-time student amidst his fourth attempt at being accepted into the same university as the rest of his family. After the passage of time, when the couple (Jonathan and Yeo-rae) returns to Korea, Bum-woo is delighted to find Yeo-rae living next door in the ironically named Happy Valley.
Whilst the film starts out almost like a fairy tale, with Jonathan singing Yeo-rae a happy song and proposing, it turns sinister pretty quickly. Fed up with being treated like Jonathan’s doll, keen to make her comeback but also rescue herself from a loveless marriage, Yeo-rae and Bum-woo join forces and start scheming to kill Jonathan. Her motive is best summed up by whichever of the following two quotes is more to your liking:-
“He was a [swear word] monster she had put up with for seven years because she was more afraid of her misfortunes being exposed to the public.”
“Are you going to live like this for the rest of your life?”
What ensues is just what happens next after that decision has been made, and takes the viewer on a wild, seemingly unplanned and spontaneous, ride along the director’s vivid imagination. If you are looking for to watch a film where quite literally anything could happen at any given moment (I’ve seen it described as “barking mad”), then this is the film for you. It is full of sharp wit, references to well-known films and popular culture, not to mention some really fun montages, and made me laugh out loud a lot at the sheer preposterous and utter ridiculousness of it all. Again, I mean that in a good way. I enjoyed it a lot!
“Don’t ask why, just go with it!”
Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
(Very Good)
Trailer: