'Yourself and Yours' Review: A delightfully enchanting movie with a pleasantly ambiguous conclusion
Spoilers for 'Yourself and Yours' aka 'Dangsinjasingwa Dangsinui Geot'
Early on in South Korean director and writer Hong Sang-soo's movie 'Yourself and Yours', Kim Young-soo (Ju-hyuk Kim) gets into a fight with his girlfriend So Min-jung (Lee Yoo-young). He has only just found out second-hand from his close friend that Min-jung was seen having one too many drinks with an unknown man. While he intends to marry his girlfriend, he cannot look beyond these rumors that are brought in from obviously trusted sources. Why would his friends even lie about seeing her out drinking? Young-soo's friends had seen her in the bar and spared no time in passing on this information via a game of Chinese whispers that eventually goes out of hand.
This fight seems to end Young-soo's relationship with Min-jung, who walks out on him after he practically refuses to believe her despite her repeated claims that she wasn't drinking with anyone and hadn't broken any promises. The next day, a very devastated Young-soo sets out in search of Min-jung who has mysteriously disappeared. He can't find her at her home or workplace. While she or another woman who looks exactly like her and may or may not be her twin meets with several strange men, some of whom claim to have met her before, all while maintaining she didn't know any of them.
Min-jung, or this version of her, is looking for the right man while accepting her innocent and impressionable approach to relationships and men. She is available to them flirting across the table with eager glances and a keen body language but still recognizing her flaws.
For his 18th feature, Hong continues his ongoing exploration of the painful caprices of modern romance. 'Yourself and Yours' is an enjoyable movie that will leave you in splits on multiple occasions, but not because there was an explicit joke but because the humor is imbibed in the characters and their ideas. For instance, the scene where a heartbroken, drunk and desperate Young-soo is expressing his love and feelings for Min-jung to his friends is captured with such authenticity and realness that you swear you had the exact same (hilarious) conversation with a friend of yours. It is a break-up/make-up comedy unlike any other you have watched before complete with a complex modernist mystery surrounding authentic, believable characters.
Hong Sang-soo's South Korean flick focuses on trust and fidelity at its core. One of the things he says in his drunken stupor is: 'The most important thing in life is love, everything else is just compensation for when you don't have it'.
'Yourself and Yours' is enchanting throughout and never once disappointing. It keeps the viewers on the edge of the seat guessing till the very last minutes of the film. What was the deal with Min-jung? It is indeed difficult to wrap one's head around that mystery. For one, we can't even tell if the fact that she refuses to recognize any of the men when approached by them is a running gag or not. This woman who was seen drinking by Young-soo's friends is not the same woman with whom he is in a relationship. People are made of complex characteristics that dictate their behaviors.
Going by romantic comedy standards, 'Yourself and Yours' is nothing that you have ever watched before. It is a keen exploration into relationships, love and the humans bound in these relationships at the same time remains carefully aloof so as to avoid outright comment on any rules of a monogamous relationship. It is only after Young-soo can learn to trust her again that their relationship gets better. Music by Dalpalan ties up the movie neatly. Watch the trailer below: