Il Mare

Plot

There are two distinct time-lines intertwined throughout most of the film.

The story begins with Eun-joo moving out of a house by the sea called "Il Mare". As she is leaving, she leaves a Christmas card in the mailbox, asking the next resident to please forward her mail to her. Sung-hyun, an architectural student, receives her card, but is puzzled, since he is the first resident at "Il Mare" and the card is dated 2 years in the future. After a series of back and forth correspondences, Eun-joo and Sung-hyun realize they are living 2 years apart, Eun-joo in the year 1999 and Sung-hyun in the year 1997. After some testing, Eun-joo and Sung-hyun discover that the mailbox at "Il Mare" is enabling their communication and they can pass objects and living creatures through.

Utilizing the mailbox, Eun-joo asks Sung-hyun to retrieve a tape player she lost two years ago, which he gets for her. After his estranged father, a noted architect, falls ill, Sung-hyun asks Eun-joo to obtain a book about his father, which she does. However, she succumbs to a minor traffic accident and while hospitalized, the book fails to reach Sung-hyun in time before his father's death. After reading the book, he finally accepts his father's love for him and takes up his architectural work once more.

As both Eun-joo and Sung-hyun continue their correspondence, they decide to try a date together, with each person participating in his or her own time. Eun-joo "takes" Sung-hyun to an amusement park, where he follows her instructions on how to have a good time at the park. Sung-hyun "takes" her to a restaurant where she drinks a bottle of wine he left for her two years prior. Despite having a lot of fun on these solo "dates", they decide that they should try to meet in person.

Eun-joo and Sung-hyun plan on meeting in person at a beach where she has always wanted to build a house, two years in Sung-hyun's future. However, when Eun-joo goes to the beach, Sung-hyun doesn't show. She does see a house being built on the beach for an unknown architect's lover. When Eun-joo tells Sung-hyun that he didn't come, he is baffled about why he didn't show up; he doesn't think he would have forgotten such an important date.

At Eun-joo's workplace, she runs into her ex-fiance. They were going to get married, but he moved abroad for work, while she stayed in Korea. Due to the separation, they eventually broke up and he married another person; Eun-joo however still loves him. This meeting was a shock to Eun-joo and in an act of desperation, she asks Sung-hyun to intervene and stop her fiance from leaving two years in the past. After sending the letter to Sung-hyun, Eun-joo suddenly realizes, on that day, she witnessed a car striking a pedestrian and killing him. Eun-joo rushes to Sung-hyun's architectural school and finds out that Sung-hyun was that very pedestrian and the house being built at the beach was designed by Sung-hyun for her. She immediately rushes to the mailbox and sends a letter telling him not to go.

The final scene returns to the beginning of the movie, where Eun-joo is about to place her Christmas card into the mailbox at "Il Mare". A stranger approaches her with a letter in his hand, the letter that Eun-joo sent warning Sung-hyun not to go to the meeting. Sung-hyun did receive her warning letter and never went to intervene that day and was never hit by the car. Eun-joo and Sung-hyun finally meet.

Cast

Location

The setting for the movie was shot on Ganghwa Island's Sukmodo, and Jeju Island's Udo.

Reception

This time-travel romance was not a popular success in 2000, selling less than a quarter million tickets in Seoul (upstaged by not only the similar-themed Ditto, but also the controversial Lies), but since then it has developed a loyal fan base a la Somewhere in Time and attained the status of a minor classic among Korean cinema fans.

Remake

Warner Brothers acquired the rights for an American remake, titled The Lake House, starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. It was released on June 16, 2006 and was co-produced by Sonny Mallhi, Amit Walia, and Chris Krapek. To reference the original movie, "Il Mare" was used as the restaurant's name where Kate and Alex are supposed to meet.