Bravo, My Life
Director: Park Heung-sik
Year: 2005
Production Company: BlueStorm Co. Ltd.
Running Time: 93 minutes
This is the third film I have seen recently
that references the assassination of President Park in 1979, but while
“The President’s Bang” (2005) and “The President’s Barber” (2004) were
both political satires “Bravo, My Life” uses the incident only to establish
time and an immediate sense of nostalgia. It is kept in the background
of a simple story about a young boy in Junior High School going through
typical adolescent growing pains of rebellion and hormones. Gwang-ho (Lee
Jae-eung) lives with his mother (Moon So-ri) and small sister in Seoul
and though a father is referenced he is supposedly always away at work
in Saudi Arabia and one is suspicious that this is just the mother’s cover
story to explain his absence. Living as a tenant with them is a young attractive
woman Eun-sook (Yoon Jin-seo) who is studying to be a nurse.
The film follows the life of this very typical
boy – his time at school – the beatings from teachers - the people in his
neighborhood – sneaking a read of Playboy magazine – his growing crush
on Eun-sook – the fear of not answering chain letters - his first wet dream
and most importantly his relationship with his mother. She clearly isn’t
an educated person and her love for her children drives her life – her
question to Gwang-ho is always “have you eaten yet?” and like all kids
that age the boy doesn’t really appreciate her and feels the need to rebel
in small ways. This sort of nostalgic a boy’s life type of film/TV series
has been done many times ("The Wonder Years" springs immediately to mind
while watching this) and in truth there isn’t much new here but it plays
out in such a relaxed realistic manner that it is a pleasure to simply
watch the small things that make up your life when you are that age. Near
the end it picks up emotionally and hits you a lot harder than you expected.
The performances by mother and son are excellent.
It's easy and almost expected that a young boy in a coming of age film
will play it with a certain amount of cute charm, but to the credit of
the film Gwang-ho is not particularly cute or charming but often annoying
in the ways kids really are at that age. Moon So-ri ("Oasis" and "A Good
Lawyer's Wife") as usual can do no wrong - there is absolutely nothing
flashy about her acting here, but she is completely believable as a good
and loving mother. Previous films from this director were the wonderfully
romantic “I Wish I Had a Wife” and the intriguing but ultimately disappointing
“My Mother, the Mermaid”.
My rating for this film: 7.0
Reviewed: 01/06
Previous films from Director:
My Mother, the Mermaid (2004)
I Wish I Had a Wife (2001)