South Korean Film 2021
Sweet & Sour (South Korean Film Review & Summary)
Sweet & Sour poster
- Genre: Modern Romance, Love Triangle, Relationship, Homelife, Worklife
- Release Date: 4 June 2021
- Origin: South Korean
- Film: 101 minutes
- Distributor: Netflix
Cast
- Jang Ki-yong as Jang-hyuk
- Chae Soo-bin as Da-eun
- Krystal Jung as Bo-yeong
- Shin Joon-hang as Team 2 member 4
- Park Chul-min as
- Yeo Min-joo as
- Park Ji-hoon as Macaron
- Yoon Byung-hee as
- Lee Kyung-young as
- Yoo Sun as
- Choi-hyeong as Emergency room doctor
- Kim Mi-hye as Nurse 2
The trailer to this film shows that Jang-hyuk is having it good. He’s got a wife at home and a wife at work. However, it is not always sweetness and light.
Whoa! I did not expect the ending at all. What a twist, what a major twist, Highly recommend this film from Netflix.
The story was that Hyeok was a tubby nerd who was hospitalised for Hepatitis B. His nurse was the lovely Da-eun who was so friendly.
Because he had hepatitis, the other men on his ward were wary that they might catch his illness despite being assured that Hepatitis B is not communicable. Most of the time Hyeok hospital curtain is closed giving him privacy from the censuring eyes of the other patients.
This meant that his nurse Da-eun could often escape in this tented hospital bed where she could catch her breath from the busy hospital. She would also often share his delicious dinner provided by his parents. She would even have a few seconds snooze by his bedside and sometimes next to him in his bed.
They became very friendly. He became like a living teddy bear who she could snuggle with in times of stress, which lately she was having a lot of.
When it was time for Hyeok to go home, he was very reluctant. In fact, he said he felt unwell but the doctor told him that he was going home the next day.
He was very sad and became heartbroken because Da-eun wasn’t there when it was time for him to leave the hospital.
Hyeok was with his three tubby nerdy friends when he told them that he can’t contact the beautiful nurse.
He went back to the hospital and was able to infiltrate the nursing station where he found Da-eun’s mobile phone number before he was told off to leave.
He started calling all the numbers that have the possible configuration of the phone number. His effort was finally rewarded when Da Eun answered the call.
Da Eun asked him if he wanted to go see her. He raced to her apartment. She invited him to sit next to her in her bed and then she told him not to go home but stay with her. They ended up cuddling the whole night in her bed. She did look very sad and needed comforting.
The next morning, Da Eun woke up with Hyeok changing her landing light, and her table was already set with breakfast.
Da Eun and Hyeok became inseparable.
They started going out and Hyeok was deliriously happy.
They were on a date, when they tried to get a ‘couple jumper’. Hyeok was partly embarrassed and partly unhappy that even the largest size would not fit him so he decided there and then that he was going to lose weight.
Da Eun told him that she got a free ticket/holiday to Jeju Island. She asked if he wanted to go.
They were at the airport when she gave him a pair of trainers. He asked if she bought it for him as their couple shoes seeing that she was wearing the same trainers (rather than an ill-matching couple jumpers). She just laughed it off saying that she thought they both would look good in them.
Hyeok promised her that he will lose weight and started running by the airport…
Hyeok was jogging. He was buff, gorgeous trimmed, with muscles in the right places.
He is some sort of a civil engineer. He would often visit his girlfriend Da-eun
One day, his boss told him that the main office would like to temporarily transfer him for a project. So he got a new Kia car and rented in the city. But most of the time he stays with his girlfriend.
They are loving and devoted to each other but it all changed when he got busier at work.
New work environment, new people, so much to get used to. Also, a girl who started at the same time as him was very abrasive at first. She was Bo Yeong, an architect/designer.
When he gets home to Da-eun, he would often moan that Bo-yeong was a bully girl, hard to get on with and was prone to stealing his thunder.
Da-eun advised him to give her taste of her own medicine.
And that was what Hyeok did during a presentation of a project to a major client who wanted a bridge built, a pretty and innovative bridge. The client was satisfied but then Hyeok pulled the rug from under Bo-yeong saying that the bridge was not structurally sound and would blow up.
Suddenly Bo Yeong lost all her confidence, she started working all hours not going home, to shower or changed clothes, she was living on pot noodles and began to smell.
Hyeok would often see her gnawing strands of her greasy hair caught on her pot noodles. `He began to feel sorry for her so he started helping her with her design.
When it was represented again, it was a hit. Hyeok and Bo Yeong became a golden couple of the project and were assigned to do another project together.
They got really closed and attraction began to develop between them. They were having dinner together when Da Eun called. Hyeok found himself lying to Da -Eun. He told her that he was with his boss and would be working overtime, ergo, won’t be able to see her.
Da-Eun told him that she had something to tell him.
And she told him when she saw him that she was pregnant. Four weeks pregnant. He was upset.
They were in a clinic to get an abortion.
But still, they continued in their relationship until they were in a drive-in burger place when she got upset that all he wanted to do when he was with her was to eat.
She became tearful and then he tenderly held her face in his hand and said “You don’t need to cry my pretty Bo Yeong”.
She asked him who was she?
They argued and it escalated with Hyeok thinking that she was so unreasonable and he had not done anything wrong.
The next day, he received a little package with the ring that he gave Da Eun.
This was the thing that he needed to proceed with bedding Bo Yeong. They became lovey dovey.
The project was finished and they both found out that they were also finished at the Main office, They can go back to their original offices.
They were both invited to the celebration/Christmas party but he kept getting a text that the Jeju Island holiday he and Da-eun booked previously had been confirmed. He thought that Da Eun had already canceled it.
He is actually missing her. And then he got another text that Da-Eun confirmed the Jeju Island booking.
He left the office party while Bo Young was still in the toilet.
He raced to the airport and saw Da-Eun looking so happy and expectantly looking at him, he thought.
Stop!!!
Major Spoiler follows
d.
Hyeok was excited to see Da-Eun as well and was running towards her when he bumped into someone.
He saw Da-eun running towards him but not to him but to the guy he bumped into.
The guy was the tubby nerd.
Apparently Gorgeous Hyeok was a different person from fat Hyeok(?)
Fat Hyeok was hospitalised when Da-Eun was about to find out that she was pregnant with gorgeous Hyeok’s baby, that’s why she was tired, eating dinner with Nerdy Hyeok when she can.
Then when he was discharged from the hospital and found Da Eun, she just had that abortion and broke up with gorgeous Hyeok. She needed comforting and found it from Fat Hyeok especially when she saw him changing the light bulb in her apartment after she had asked gorgeous Hyeok to do it previously but did not.
Now at the airport, while she ignored gorgeous Hyeok, she helped fat Hyeok to get up and enter the terminal while giving gorgeous Hyeok a last look.
It was satisfactory to see that gorgeous Hyeok got his comeuppance. It was exacerbated by Bo Yeong turning down the ring gorgeous Hyeok was giving her. It was the ring that Da-Eun returned to him. What a cad!
I must say the characters here believe in the adage that “To get over a relationship, start a new one.”
But I think, Da-Eun new relationship will not going to last. Relationship is so complex and how men and women see it are totally different as well.
