![]() The leap from stage to screen has been treacherous for so many talented playwrights, awkwardly trying to transplant wordy monologues that can suffocate actors on film while keeping a too-narrow focus on a world that’s just opened up for them. We end another 12 years after as Hae Sung is visiting New York and over a handful of days, he finally gets to see Nora again. ![]() Through Facebook, the pair reconnect and develop a Skype-based romance, fun at first but when they begin to realise that neither is planning to make a trip, Nora cuts things off. We then move forward 12 years, with Nora in New York and Hae Sung living at home. Whatever burgeoning pre-pubescent feelings they might have, they’re cut short when Nora and her family move to Canada. Try as they might, there’s no chance they could ever guess and so Song takes us back to explain, first to Seoul 24 years earlier as Nora and Hae Sung are classmates with an unspoken draw to one another. The unseen voices play a game of strangers, speculating who the trio might be and what their connection is (it’s a game that’s been overused in romantic comedies in recent years but usually played by the leads). In a cleverly reversed opening scene, we see Nora (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Arthur (John Magaro) being spoken about at a bar. But Song has made exactly the kind of film that causes so many of us to trek through the Utah snow in hope, something that never feels anything less than true, harking back to thwarted love stories such as Brief Encounter and Weekend but remaining its own, special thing.
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