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Ko Ah-Sung and Moon Sang-min in a rainy scene from Pavane

Pavane, South Korean romance

Pavane brings another slow and chaste South Korean love story to Netflix. For most of its nearly two hour run time, I thought it was telling a great story with a great message. Then it blew the ending.

Pavane features three main characters. Mi-jeong (Ko Ah-Sung) works in a dark, unlit basement fetching things the sales people above her need. The women who work on the upper floors have all had their noses and eyelids done so they look like Western movie stars. Mi-jeong doesn’t fit that beauty standard. Most of her colleagues make fun of her, because what use is a woman who isn’t beautiful?

Gyeong-rok (Moon Sang-min) is the hidden and unacknowledged son of a famous star. He’s working in the parking garage. When he meets Mi-jeong, he likes her and is kind to her.

Moon Sang-min and Byun Yo-han in a restaurant with a fish tank in Pavane.
Gyeong-rok and Yo-han visit this cafe often

Yo-han (Byun Yo-han) also works in the parking garage. He’s a depressed writer, always writing things down and reciting the same sad love poem several times as the love story between Gyeong-rok and Mi-jeong proceeds. He’s secretly recording their love story in his notebooks.

Gyeong-rok is nice to Mi-jeong and interested in her as a person. She slowly responds to his attention. They spend time together outside of work as they get to know each other. Mi-jeong blooms under Gyeong-rok’s love and affection.

The poster for Pavane

Gyeong-rok and Mi-jeong helped each other in many ways. They believed in each other’s dreams, they inspired confidence in each other. It was a lovely romance proving that Western beauty standards do not make a woman more valuable or important than a natural looking Korean woman.

Until it wasn’t.

The ending contradicted everything that had gone before and seemed to fall back on the old trope that less than beautiful women weren’t worthy of love. I did not like the ending. Not one bit.

Nor did I like the way Yo-han used their love story to make himself look good. That felt like a betrayal.

Certainly the underlying message in this k-drama was a worthy one about beauty standards and body image. But the final moments contradicted that message.

I may be the only one who reacted to the ending of Mi-jeong’s story this way because many other reviewers have praised this story. It was tender and loving for a long time. Then it slipped and stabbed itself in the heart.

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Virginia DeBolt

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One response to “Pavane, South Korean romance”

  1. John Newell Avatar
    John Newell

    Virginia, you have just stumbled upon what makes Korean and Chinese filming so good: the endings are not always happy or predictable. You don’t know until you get there whether “there” is where you want to be. American movies all follow the same predictable formula that is not at all what real life is like. After a lifetime of watching American movies and even cartoons, I’m sick and tired of watching the same plot over and over and over where the actors may or may not change, the costumes change, the sets change within a limited menu. South Korean and Chinese films don’t always follow the same trajectory. They keep you guessing on a more fundamental level. And as chaste as their filming might be, those cultures are neither chaste nor addicted to formula plot development.

    On the surface for instance, their movies are full of phenomenal sets and courtesy. But real life in those countries still has a powerful undercurrent of ruthless aggression towards women and children. Trafficking is present in plain sight. To see this, all you have to do is follow some of the Kpop and Cpop music groups. They are dominating the world music scenes. The same is happening in the film industry, though only Pursuit of Jade has really become internationally dominant to date. Parasite may have made a splash but the Oscar didn’t turn that film into a phenomenon like POS became in only 12 days.

    But when you look deeper, you find those music groups and the film industry own the lives of the performers. Many of them commit suicide. Even the fans of the performers can easily cause the star to commit suicide. The industry executives are known offenders. The same thing happened in Hollywood, but not to the public extent that it’s happening in Korea particularly.

    Then you have what is a growing, dominant porn industry, particularly in Japan where women are so vulnerable that if they fight back against their aggressors, THEY, the victims are the ones charged with assault.

    Yet in the movies the chasteness is carried on to the extent that the protagonists commonly go to bed in romantic scenes in winter coats. There is no central heating so in some interior scenes you can see the actors’ breath. That makes the chasteness seem believable. But if chasteness was carried on in real life to that extent, there’d be no babies.

    It’s a whole different way of looking at life. The world over we individually face similar challenges but in China and Korea, those challenges are met with a very different mindset than we have grown up with .

    Reply

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