One Line Review: A melodrama about first love, and one of the most representative melodramas of this era.
Title: Architecture 101 (건축학개론)
Director: LEE Yong-joo (이용주)
Starring: Uhm Tae-woong (엄태웅), Han Gain (한가인), Lee Je-hoon (이제훈), Bae Suzy (수지)
Release date: March 22nd, 2012, South Korea
Rating: 4.5/5
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2337981/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_%2522Architecture%2520101%2522
01: Architecture 101 Characters
01-01: Seung-min
Young Seung-min: Lee Je-hoon (이제훈)
Old Seung-min: Uhm Tae-woong (엄태웅)
Seung-min, a young man studying architecture, has a crush on Seo-yeon, a music student taking an introductory architecture class.
When they discover that they live in the same neighborhood, Seung-min and Seo-yeon make memories they can keep.
Seung-min tries to get closer to Seo-yeon, but can’t muster up the courage.
01-02: Seo-yeon
Young Seo-yeon: Bae Suzy (배수지)
Old Seo-yeon: Han Gain (한가인)
Seo-yeon, a music student who traveled from Jeju Island to Seoul, attends an introductory architecture class to see her crush.
There, she meets Seung-min, and their neighborhoods overlap, and they become close, but only as memories.
Fifteen years later, Seo-yeon shows up to ask Seung-min, now an architect, to design her house.
02: Features of the movie
It was a really poignant, beautiful, and realistic story. It’s a movie for both men and women, but I would say it’s a movie for men.
It was an affectionate movie that reminded me of the innocent days of men. And the backgrounds, props, and music made me feel like I was going on a trip down the 90s.
In this section, we’ll take a look at the movie itself.
02-01: Screenplay Features inc. first love
First of all, the movie’s screenplay is very clean. It’s well-written and captures the characters well.
It uses props, dialog, and behavior to show us how to capture the characters. The story is well paced.
The use of flashbacks between the present and the past is well balanced so that the story doesn’t become confusing, and the consequences of the present and the events in the past are neatly tied together to give the story a sense of completeness.
It’s also a great way to incorporate elements such as Seung-min’s cigarette smoking to create emotional impact.
If we look at the story, we can think a detective story makes us go back to the past.
There was an incident 15 years ago that led to a misunderstanding. Then Seo-yeon comes to Seung-min 15 years later with a rather strange request to build a house. Seung-min is forced to relive his forgotten memories and recall his first love.
The story tells the story of Seung-min’s first love, its ending, and his current resolve, as well as revealing Seo-yeon’s inner thoughts, which Seung-min never knew.
These processes flow naturally without any awkwardness, and the ending of Seung-min’s decision and the ending of Seung-min’s first love story are shown at the end, moving the audience.
The Importance of building a house
Seo-yeon’s house, which is being built in the movie, is the link between Seung-min and Seo-yeon in the present, and it is a correlative of their love story.
When the process of building the house is smooth, their story is portrayed as a green and pretty relationship, and when conflicts arise in the process, their story becomes conflicted.
In this way, the progress of the house represents their love story and, as mentioned above, is the link between Seung-min and Seo-yeon in the present.
The moment Seo-yeon’s house is completed, Seung-min and Seo-yeon will no longer be able to meet.
Once the house is completed, Seung-min will have fulfilled his duties as an architect, and his contractual relationship with Seo-yeon will be over. Their story will naturally come to an end with the completion of the house.
As Seo-yeon’s house is being built, their story is told in flashbacks, and as the house is completed, the movie races toward the end.
As a representation of their love, Seo-yeon’s house is very important and central to the story.
02-02: Acting
The actors in the movie were pretty evenly matched throughout, with the lead actors, Lee Je-hoon, Bae Suzy, Han Gain, and Uhm Tae-woong providing a pretty neat balance.
Lee Je-hoon, who was literally a rising star, showed off his hidden talents, Bae Suzy made good use of her youthfulness, and Han Gain fit in well with his character, giving him a leg up on the acting controversy in “Moon embracing the Sun”.
Uhm Tae-woong is the standout actor of the bunch. He’s an unfortunate actor who isn’t the most recognizable in terms of looks, but the acting skills he’s built up are evident, and this was definitely his breakout movie after “Cyrano agency”.
Aside from the lead actors, there were two supporting actors who saved the movie: Cho Jung Seok and Yoo Yeonseok.
Cho Jung Seok shows a tremendous sense of humor in a movie that could have easily been heavy and serious.
He literally makes you laugh out loud. If I were to list the funniest Korean movies in 2012, I dare say it would include several scenes with Cho Jung Seok in this movie.
Yoo Yeonseok was literally a bad character. The character was so bad that you could almost hate the actor. Even though he wasn’t in many scenes, he made a strong impression.
02-03: Characters in the movie
After looking at the supporting characters, the mix of characters in this movie is quite impressive.
The protagonist is a pretty normal guy, except that he’s an architect, which was a logical choice for the movie because being an architect means that his first love can come to him and ask him to build her a house, but Seung-min is also an architect and an office worker.
If you look at the supporting character next to Seung-min, you can find the guy played by Cho Jung Seok.
You know, the kind of guy who’s been around the block a little bit, who’s fashionable, who likes girls, but who’s really there for his friends.
It’s also true that the role of Jae-wook, played by Yoo Yeonseok, can also be found around us. He’s gentle, he has a nice house and he’s good-looking. So he gets a good reputation from everyone, but in reality, he thinks of women as objects to be conquered.
Even if you don’t get along with someone like that, they’re definitely a character to be around.
After looking at that combination, and then you look at the movie again, you realize that this is the story of most Korean men.
It’s not the story of a specific character named Seung-min, it’s the story of every guy in Korea, and it’s the story of everybody’s experience.
That’s why the movie is so infectious and why it’s a movie that everyone can relate to.
The difference between men and women
But if you ask me if it’s a movie for men, I would say no, it’s not.
The character Seo-yeon (Bae Suzy and Han Gain) may be the fantasy that all women desires in Korea.
In other words, young Seo-yeon, played by Bae Suzy, represents the innocence of Korean girls. They’re so innocent, and they try so hard to show what they like, but they can’t say what they like.
They send out signals, hoping that a man will recognize them. But the grown-up Seo-yeon is different. She’s married to a wealthy man.
It’s what we call “Hon-Te-ku” in Korea which means marriage with rich person, where girls jokingly say they’re going to marry a rich guy and then actually do it.
And then it didn’t work out, and she came to Seung-min in search of her first love after 15 years. Women can’t help but empathize with Seo-yeon, even as they feel envious.
03: First Love in the movie
Seung-min and Seo-yeon’s childhood love is literally budding. It’s also heartbreaking to see them torn apart by unintentional misunderstandings.
In the movie, the editing aesthetics of certain scenes allowed for different interpretations by different individuals.
I think that makes the movie more beautiful and relatable.
Quite a few women told me that they had a hard time understanding the part where young Seung-min says to young Seo-yeon, “Will you please get out of my sight now?” and why she didn’t stand up for herself when she was being dragged away by Jae-wook before that.
This is something that men take for granted, but women may have a hard time understanding.
Subtle relationship
To briefly recap the situation, Seung-min was in love with Seo-yeon, so he skipped his last class and waited for her outside her office.
They’d rehearsed their confession over and over again with a fancy house model they’d made, and even had some soju to relax, but Seung-min wasn’t sure if Seo-yeon liked him.
On the contrary, he knew that she had a crush on Jae-wook, a senior at Kingka, and that she was taking the Introduction to Architecture class because of him.
So if she liked Jae-wook, she liked him, but it was hard to imagine her liking him.
And it’s not easy for a young, innocent man to be so confident.
Misunderstanding
In the meantime, Seo-yeon gets into Jae-wook’s car and gets out in front of his office in a drunken stupor. Jae-wook is about to take Seo-yeon inside his office, and Seung-min’s stomach must be churning as he realizes Jae-wook’s dark intentions.
He’s not sure if Seo-yeon likes him, he feels objectively inferior to Jae-wook, and if he had to choose between the two of them, there’s an almost 100% chance he wouldn’t be chosen.
Add to that the fact that Seo-yeon revealed that she likes Jae-wook, and it would have been even harder for Seung-min to stand up for himself, and he would have had to turn around in tears for Seo-yeon’s sake.
Whether or not Seo-yeon and Jae-wook had sex after that is up for debate, and my personal opinion is that they probably didn’t, but it’s a pretty unrealistic conclusion based on Jae-wook’s character.
The conclusion of the story as it unfolds in this movie is very realistic. Seung-min ultimately chooses to get married and at the end of the movie, he gives Seo-yeon the CD and the CD player to tie up loose ends.
Reunion
By having Seo-yeon come back to visit him after 15 years, Seung-min and Seo-yeon are able to clear up all the misunderstandings about their first love and make it a more fond and beautiful memory.
There’s no right answer to the question about dealing with the first love. But this movie does give us some closure.
That we should keep them as memories.
That just because you didn’t connect with your first love doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reconnect with it.
It’s often said that it’s best to keep your first love as a memory, and in a way, this movie is making that obvious conclusion.
But regardless of the conclusion, the process is different. It’s not everybody’s job to remember something so sincerely and passionately.
The story of Seung-min and Seo-yeon’s past wasn’t meant to be a conversation between them or a shared memory.
It was just that when Seo-yeon came back to visit and he built her a house, he couldn’t help but recall those memories, and with those memories, the misunderstanding was naturally resolved, and the tragic memory of their first love was transformed into a beautiful memory.
In the movie, no one knows if Seung-min will have a happy marriage or if Seo-yeon will end up marrying another man.
But we can at least be sure that Seung-min has set Seo-yeon up for a happy marriage, that Seo-yeon has turned her memories of Seung-min into happy memories, and that each of them has been able to move forward without being held back by the past.
04: Conclusion
I personally recommend watching this movie alone. If you watch it with your significant other, you’re likely to get into a fight.
Aggressive questions like “Is he really like that?” and “Why is she like that?” are likely to be asked, and there’s a good chance that men will look at Bae Suzy and Han Gain, and women will look at Lee Je-Hoon and lament their own lovers on the sidelines.
If you want your date to be anything more than a memory, you’re going to need to turn up the emotional heat on yourself.
This isn’t a movie to get you in the mood for a date night.
Rather, it’s the kind of movie that takes the scraps of paper of our first love memories that have been folded up in the corners of our minds and turns them into a neatly ironed and framed picture.
How hard is it to do that with someone else?
“Architecture 101”, I think it could be the melodramatic movie of the 2010s.
