Our Happy Time

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Movie: Our Happy Time / Maundy Thursday
Revised romanization: Urideul-ui haengbok-han shigan
Hangul: 우리들의 행복한 시간
Director: Song Hae-Sung
Writer: Gong Ji-Young (novel), Jang Min-Seok
Producer: Lee Seung-Jae, Kim Sang-Geun, Lim Byung-Hoon, Ahn Sang-Hoon
Cinematographer: Kang Seung-Ki
Release Date: September 14, 2006
Runtime: 120 min
Production Budget: US$ 4.2 M
Distributor: Prime Entertainment
Language: Korean
Country: South Korea

Plot

Yu-Jung (Lee Na-Young) has now attempted her third suicide attempt. Her disdain for her mother and indifference to the rest of the world, isolates her from any chance for happiness. Yu-Jung also has an aunt named Sister Monica. Her aunt often goes to prison to meet with death row inmates. Sister Monica meets a new death row inmate, who asks Sister Monica if he could meet her niece Yu-Jung. Sister Monica asks Yu-Jung if she would counsel this death row inmate and Yu-Jung reluctantly agrees to do so.

Yu-Jung and the death row inmate do not open up to each other immediately. Yu-Jung comes from a family of wealth and is now a professor at a university. Yet, she has never known happiness since the age of 15. The inmate that she meets, named Yun-Soo (Gang Dong-Won), has had an even more traumatic childhood experience. He was abandoned by his parents at an early age and has had to live on the streets while caring for a younger brother. Eventually Yun-Soo ends up involved in the criminal world and gets convicted for murder. With their disparate backgrounds, Yu-Jung and Yun-Soo are still able to connect with each other, because both people know grief like few others could possibly know. As they both regain the will to live through their weekly meetings, they must now deal with their feelings for each other and come to grips with the short amount of time they have together.

Cast



Lee Na-Young	Gang Dong-Won	Yun Yeo-Jong	Jeong Yeong-Suk
Moon Yu-Jung	Jung Yun-Soo	Yu-Jung's aunt	Yu-Jung's mother



Jang Hyun-Sung	Kang Shin-Il	Kim Ji-Yeong	Oh Gwang-Rok
Yu-Jung's father	Lee Ju-Lim	Park	Death Row Inmate 2896

Additional Cast Members:

Comments

Comment #2
Ki Says:
Feb 14 2011 4:23 am

Considering Maundy Thursday aka Our Happy Time is directed by Hae-Sung Song (Failan/Rikodazan), has an interesting premise and features one of my favorite actresses on the planet, Lee Na-Young, I was just stoked to see this film. After viewing the film, I was left with a teary eyed expression, but not from any strong emotional ties to the film, but more like the nauseating feeling from whiffing extrememly foul scented cheese. Lots of cheese. Boatloads of cheese and its cheesiness.

Cliche after cliche was thrown into this tear jerker film. For starters, we have a poor orphaned boy, that has had to take care of a younger brother, until that younger brother dies while sleeping out on the cold streets. Eventually the poor orphaned boy almost gets his life straightened, but has to come up with money to pay for his sick pregnant girlfriend. He gets involved in one last criminal act, but winds up getting the blame for a crime that he almost doesn't commit, which is hard to fathom, but nonetheless plausible. Unfortunately the breaking straw to this plausibility is that the condemned killer is played by former model and now actor Dong-Won Kang. Nothing personal against Dong-Won Kang, he was good in the lightweight comedy Too Beautiful Too Lie and was passable as the action hero stud in Temptation of the Wolves, but the guy was simply miscast as a street hardened death row inmate. In a pivotal point in the movie, where he apologizes to the mother of a girl that he killed, he simply could not carry the weight of emotions that the scene required. Or put in a slimper way, the dude just ain't no Choi Min-Sik.

Lee Na-Young was better in her role as the bipolar rich bitch with the occasional mean-streak. Her character, Yu-Jung, has been angry at the world since the age of 15. Her anger is strongest against her mother, because her mother did not try to help her at an earlier traumatic time (and in fact blamed her for her problems). The flashback scene where Yu-Jung confides to her mother, only to get slapped in the face by her mother, was hard to fathom but made more sense after a friend explained the scene better than the actual movie. The movie "Maundy Thursday" was based on a popular Korean novel and in the novel, (but not explained in the movie) Yu-Jung's family was wealthy because of a family run business. Furthermore, the cousin that Yu-Jung accused to her mother, had a father that was an extremely influential politician. That politician could have destroyed their family's business if such accusations became public and this is why Yu-Jungâ's mother reacted the way she did. Corny, but at least the scene made more sense after knowing that fact.

I should note that Lee Na-Young is one of the more talented actresses when it comes to convincingly shedding tears on screen and, unlike her co-star, she was able to do so convincingly again in Maundy Thursday. As you can tell I am quite enamored with Lee Na-Young and this fact may have led me to notice some strange quirks in the movie. One of the more notable goofs would have been early in the film, when Lee Na-Young was sitting alone in her parked car. She takes out a bottle of pills and proceeds to swallow a handful in another attempted suicide. Of course during this scene, I had to notice her hair, which was straight as can be and quite alluring. Yet, in the next scene, Lee Na-Young is laying down in a hospital bed with a fashionably permed hairstyle! I'm not sure if the pills caused her to get the kinky hair or maybe a hair stylist came out to the operation room, but regardless it was another scene hard to fathom.

Besides the presence of Lee Na-Young, there just wasn't much in Maundy Thursday to get excited about. The male lead was seriously miscast and the film had just way to many cliches. These cliches all came to a crescendo during the final scene which was representative of the film as a whole: quite touching in concept but just way to much cheesiness in execution.
Comment #1
kawaiikahji Says:
Apr 17 2009 11:47 am

it was a heartwarming plot. all actors played well. one of my most beautiful bittersweet korean films. sobs**