COME RAIN COME SHINE
Korea, 2011, 105 minutes, Colour
Lim Soo- Jeong Hyun Bin.
Directed by Lee Yoon- Ki.
Plenty of rain, not much evidence of shine.
After a single ten-minute take with he and she driving to the airport, engaged in casual domestic conversation, she quietly tells him that she is moving out with another man. The film then slows right down to fifty minutes of her packing, wandering their house, remembering details, some slight interactions, giving us more than ample time to be interested (or not) and decide whom we should like/dislike. It is pouring outside.
Then a little cat falls through a grate. They rescue it. It scratches the husband and his wife tends to it. The chatty neighbours who are looking for the cat, arrive, talk, compare notes, turn on the TV for the weather, devise ways of enticing the cat out and, finally, leave. He prepares a pasta meal, she a salad. He goes upstairs to wash his eyes after cutting up onions. The cat returns, eats fish from a tin, and she looks at it.
The cat symbolises the woman and her behaviour, scratching the man, returning and being at home. Come shine.
1. A Korean story? More contemplative? Quiet and reflective?
2. The title? Much rain? Any shine?
3. The car, the house, the details of the house, lived-in, affluent? Attention drawn to the details? Musical score?
4. The first take, ten minutes, the focus on the couple in the car? Their age, marriage, five years? She going to the airport for a business trip to Japan? Their talking, seeming at ease, casual, ordinary, the coffee and the juice? The offer for picking up on the return? Her casual talk about moving out, the separation? His seemingly nonchalant response?
5. The fifty-minute scene of the packing, the memories in the house, she giving the orders, her cases, he being pleasant, quiet, her questions, wondering about his calm and politeness or his repressing his anger? The gradual revelation of characters? Audiences taking sides in sympathy? The rain, the reservation at the café?
6. the entrance of the cat, the rain, falling through the grid, their rescuing it, scratching the man, its disappearance? The owners arriving, intrusion, continual talk, comparisons of the house, the dental clinic, turning on the television, watching the news, the suggestion about tuna, anchovies for the cat? Their chatter about the cat? The phone call from the lover, the offer to pick the woman up, delaying it because of the rain?
7. He changing his clothes, preparing the meal, the pasta, she preparing the salad, the cat coming back again, she looking at it, thinking, he going to wash his face? The uncertainty of the ending?
8. The cat as an image, wandering, coming back, staying? The image of the cat for the behaviour of the woman? The husband and his love for his wife, accepting this?
