A Short Love Affair (1990) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Avirup

  While it's pretty decent as a love affair melodrama, it's also very interesting as a social portrait — dead-end nature of rural life, the poverty, gender dynamics, toxic masculinity. The observations are quite sharp. Though overall it doesn't quite come together but I really liked how naturalistic the whole thing is; the scenes of affairs, first time having sex in a dingy motel, making out in greenhouse, the interactions between sweatshop workers , the way the neighbours all gather when something happens — the lived in feel is really great.

  Also the way wife was beating the shit out of his cheating husband, got him in a triangle choke even. Then later grabbed him by the balls and dragged him through the neighborhood. That's what you call a strong woman.

• Review by jrhovind ★★★½

  Less a portrait of a doomed love affair than a withering, exhausting dissection of how a man can be transformed into a void; rendered so emotionally crippled by a society with too little opportunity and too many demands, where what might be love is left to curdle into the hard-shelled bitterness and desperation of mere survival. “Fuck, let’s stop talking about depressing shit and get wasted!” Il-do’s marriage is but a sad roundelay of squabbling, abuse, and mutual disappointment, though Jang’s sensitive enough to go backward to explore just how and why Il-do’s wife came to be so hard-hearted. Mournful Satie rises on the soundtrack as Il-do drifts into the arms of Gong-rye, his co-worker at a rural sweatshop, neither…

• Review by ablackie ★★★½

  “우린 계속해서 이렇게 샛길로 가야할 거예요” / We’ll have to continue along this backroad
  “넓고 환한 길은 재미가 없잖아요” / Wide, well-lit roads are no fun anyway

  Surprise of surprises: Jang Sun-woo proves to be a very good director of conventional romance. (This is even more disarming, considering the direction he would take with his next film.) Capturing the growing attraction between two people: cinema was made for this, and the first hour of A Short Love Affair is spellbinding. Jang builds scenes out of eyelines, as the pair communicate through furtive glances, dancing tentatively around the realm of possibility.

  Of course, they are not the only ones watching each other: they both have spouses and their colleagues, performing a…

• Review by Leo Pietro ★★★ 3

  huy anong ginagawa niyo chaeryeong at jyp

• Review by emkang ★★★★½

  In many ways, it seems like a typical melodrama on the surface, but there are some interesting aspects that I observed. The big one is just how public this whole affair is. The women at the factory very loudly observe the potential chemistry between the couple. The punishments and comeuppances of the characters are also very public. Also, the male lead is quite unlikable and definitely less sympathetic than the female lead, and it seems quite deliberate. And then when his partner comes into the story, she is freaking hurricane of emotion and anger. For people who think Korean women are naturally cute and feminine, I've seen more women that are like her than any other type of woman. It's…

• Review by Josh Parmer ★★★★ 1

  Jang Sun-woo knew how to lay out a hard hitting drama too. This one is dark and bleak and filled to the brim with a lot of people with very little. It is a very lived in an open world where everyone knows everything and people where their tattered hearts on their sleeves. It made me feel really sad. Even the little moments where warmth tries to bubble up, they are all quickly snuffed out by the harsh cold that dominates both the land and the psyche of those who inhabit these cold lands. A 90s Korean classic and one more folks should see. It is a tough watch but an important one nonetheless.

• Review by Oscar Lau ★★★

  A drastically different film from The Age of Success, the depiction of working class marital unfulfillment in Lovers of Woomuk-Baemi is realistic and sympathetic, albeit far from outstanding as a melodrama. The rural poverty, social immobilization, masculinity and gender dynamic are examined through an adulterous affair, yet everything came off predicable and tame. It never quite reach an emotional catharsis I wish for.

  Jang Sun-woo Ranked

• Review by scarramba ★★★

  Perplexed. I really liked the wife that keeps beating the shit out her cheating husband, though.

• Review by redalligator ★★★★½

  Where Age of Success delivers constant satire and social critique, Jang Sun-woo's follow up is much more observational in its focus of human relationships and social contradictions in a very specific place and time. There are bold explorations of one-on-one power dynamics between men and women under the patriarchy. Woomookbaemi's ever-present train provides the rural milieu with a connection to nearby Seoul: A megalopolis staggering from hyper-development. The film itself radically shifts its focus midway from Bae Ildo's romance to the impact his behavior has had on Sae-daek, the mother of his child and wife (though the marriage was never recognized by state, family, or ostensibly Ildo himself). Also in play are differences in interactions between community members in rural…

• Review by 𝗆𝗂𝗅𝖾𝗌

  every day i gain more reasons to hate men

• Review by Tyler Plunkett

  There is little in the way of stylistic or thematic consistency among the three Jang films I’ve seen, but that is part of what makes him, in my eyes, the most intriguing of the Korean New Wave filmmakers. This is undoubtedly his most commercial effort of the three (A Petaland Resurrection of the Little Match Girl being the others), though the familiar romantic cues trod along with a polemical idiosyncrasy. Perhaps not essential in the grand scheme of things, but possibly a good jumping off point for those who want to dig into the work of a truly singular artist.

  The Korean Film Archive did an immaculate job on the transfer for the Blu-Ray. Though not of the utmost importance, the packaging is really beautiful too, for those into physical media.

• Review by augustgarage ★★★½

  Sort of an anti-romance? - "my love for you is like a mummy."

  Yoo Hye-ri's performance transcends the writing.

  Difficult for me to bridge the cultural gap (and domestic violence as slapstick hasn't aged well), but I can sort of see how this is seen as essential Korean cinema for the era.