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Directed by ROH Deok
Starring KIM Min-hee, LEE Min-ki, RA Mi-ran, CHOI Moo-sung, KIM Gang-hyeon, PARK Byeong-eun
Release Date March 21, 2013

Yeong (KIM Min-hee) and Dong-hee (LEE Min-ki) break up. For a brief time, it is an amicable split. But given the fact that they work together at the same bank, and see each other every day, it’s perhaps inevitable that hurt feelings and pangs of jealousy soon flare up. After a particularly dramatic and embarrassing fight in front of all their colleagues, they are more or less at war with each other. Yeong wants compensation for all the money she’s spent on him over the course of their relationship. Dong-hee wants his computer back. He gets it back, but not in the condition he expected.

 

Very Ordinary Couple starts off with hurtful words and (often hilarious) altercations, but this is not simply a sex-war comedy about single Korean professionals. Director ROH Deok soon brings the temperature down, and Yeong and Dong-hee start to get on with their lives. As they meet other people and gradually forge an uneasy truce, the audience becomes more and more interested in these two very ordinary but quite fascinating characters.

 

Although it is being marketed as a romantic comedy, Very Ordinary Couple does not quite fit that description. There is certainly plenty of humor, but the way it portrays this relationship between two people is more realistic than we are used to in mainstream commercial films. Even as it entertains the audience, the conclusions it draws about dating and long-term relationships seem the result of real-life experience, rather than being shaped to send the audience out of the theater in a good mood.

 

This is the first film by director ROH Deok, who previously worked as a scripter on the cult classic Save the Green Planet!, and won praise for her short film The Secret within Her Mask (2005). She said she began writing the script in 2006, originally intending to tell the story of two university students, before making the characters somewhat older.  The project was greenlighted in 2008 under a different title, but then fell apart. Nonetheless she stuck with the project and eventually was given a second opportunity to realize it. The film has been well-received since its March 21 release, and managed to spend its first week at #1 in the box office chart. After two weeks, the film has amassed a respectable 1.4 million admissions. It is distributed both domestically and internationally by Lotte Entertainment.