Director: Lee Min Kyu
Writer: Lee Min Kyu
Cast: Kim Hyo Eun, Min A Yeon & Seo Hyun Woo
Running time: 22mins
There is something stilting and dangerous about the early stages of infatuation. There is an unavoidable risk, that we may have misjudged either ourselves of the person we direct our affections toward. Because in those first weeks, we don’t really know each other beyond assumptions we have made on surface level information.
Many budding relationships stumble at the point when we manage to place the other person or people more accurately, within our own coordinates of who we are. When we realise beyond that initial attraction, there is nothing to talk about, it can be an extremely dangerous moment, where we are left picking between different forms of pain.
In some cases, in a bid to avoid that pain, some people can try to remake themselves, or their partners – a process which eventually only serves to emphasise that pain. Losing sight of who we are in such a way can leave us utterly incapable of communicating – drowning in angry silences and micro-aggressions, not knowing how to reach each other anymore, however urgently we might need to.
Lee Min Kyu’s abstract relationship drama Me captures the frustration and anguish of this scenario. Eun Young (Kim Hyo Eun) and Jenny (Min A Yeon) are not able to speak to each other – basic communication has broken down between the pair, to the extent that even when the elephant in the room becomes almost absurdly literal, they can still only hint at it in vague illusory statements.
Jenny – who we are introduced to via a lengthy spell of staring into a mirror – is undergoing a bizarre medical emergency. Flowers have begun to sprout from the left side of her face. The supremely painful eruption of flora causes her to panic, and calls for help from her girlfriend – who she has recently been avoiding for reasons which are not initially clear.
Her cheek feels like it has been “scraped raw”, she meekly whispers into the phone, before completely ignoring anything Eun Young has to say in response. From this very first protracted exchange, Jenny subjects the audience to a similar, nagging pain. There is a dull ache that nags at us relentlessly, as we plead with her to acknowledge the obvious, and actually let Eun Young know why it is important that she turns up – but she is wholeheartedly resistant to this.
Eventually, Eun Young frustratedly agrees to come to the apartment and see what is going on for herself. But only after it becomes clear to us that this is a relationship in which a power-dynamic has been almost violently cultivated. Jenny sees herself as the centre of the universe, and expects her partner to re-orient her entire personality around that indisputable position. Anything that might challenge that prompts a stony silence.
When Eun Young arrives, we see that hanging onto this relationship by submitting to this position has also taken a toll. She is similarly unable to comment in the way we would expect a normal, real person to react to someone GROWING FLOWERS FROM THEIR FACE. Instead, she can only mumble questions skirting around the borderline horrific image before her – questions like “Does it hurt?”, which she already knows the answer to.
Still, as the crisis deepens, it becomes clear something has to give. As the film passes the half-way point, the introduction of Jenny’s nameless ex-boyfriend (Seo Hyun Woo) serves as a catalyst to this. He is currently employed at a flower shop, and apparently dealt with a similar situation himself when he was with Jenny. While initially it might be read that the flowers are some clumsy metaphors for an infection he transmitted to her, though, it transpires that this is an emotional ailment, and that their relationship might have suffered from a similar dynamic to this one.
His proposed resolution will be painful. It will leave scars. But it will also be necessary for both Jenny and Eun Young to find themselves again. Literally, and metaphorically, the film moves towards a bitter-sweet, somewhat ambiguous ending, where we are left to wonder how each character will continue to grow when the credits role. It is a mark of the film’s quality that we will all want answers to those questions, in spite of the purposefully excruciating pace of the opening third of the story.
On a technical basis, Lee Min Kyu’s production also deserves a great deal of praise. The facial prosthetic used to suggest Jenny’s fearful ailment is a little DIY, but never becomes distracting – likely helped by the sheer quality of the performances of all three actors – while Ko Gihyeok’s moody violet lighting and the cinematography of Lim Hyunseung frame our view in a way to highlight the flowers, without drawing our attention to them for too long.
Meanwhile, the soundtrack is unobtrusive with a patient electronic ambience only creeping in at key moments of emotional tension. Lee Min Kyu instead chooses to let the majority of the tension and emotion breathe, and speak for themselves, in a way which credits viewers with the intelligence to decide how to feel about any of this.
But most notably, Lee Min Kyu’s script also manages to deliver an excellent story with a similarly hands-off approach. Delivering on the classic premise of short cinema – that we should come into a story late, and leave early – the narrative never comes close to patronising us with heavy sections of expository dialogue. Doing so would have been a temptation, but would also have utterly destroyed the portrayal of a relationship where communications have broken down as each person finds themselves in denial about the state of things.
It admittedly may make it a tough watch for some viewers, but for anyone with the patience to sit through the story in its entirety, it becomes extremely rewarding, to feel like we’ve pieced together the narrative, almost for ourselves. And looking ahead in our own lives, that will also make its prompts to re-evaluate our own relationships all the more impactful.
Me is unapologetically slow-moving, and refuses to baby its audience. It is sometimes a frustrating watch, but that is the point. This is not about fulfilment, but rather thinking about the things that may be preventing it – and hurting those we profess to love in the process. Lee Min Kyu has realised those ambitions in clever, creative fashion – subverting our expectations of derivative storylines from the very beginning, to instead deliver a story that its audience can grow with.
