Based on the plot of the 2000 Irish-British film, About Adam, Everybody Has Secrets is put through the Korean remake machine by director Jang Hyeon-su to tell a clever story and radically diverge from the pack of typical Korean rom-com’s. The film is focused foremost on entertainment, treating sex like a joke and throwing morality straight out the window, but if you can get past the film’s shady message, the creative screenplay coupled with the excellent cast will show you a good time.
Mi-yeong, having just dumped her boyfriend (because he bores her), spots Su-hyeon at her nightclub while she sings jazz on stage. She strikes up a conversation with him, gets to know him better as a perfect, infallible boyfriend and falls head over heels in love with him. He meets the family, which includes Mi-yeong‘s two sisters, brother and mother, and he makes a fantastic impression yet again, instantly earning the family’s approval. However, when he proposes to Mi-yeong, only a third of the way into the film, the story is then retold through the perspectives of the rest of the family members, and we see that he did more with them than gain approval.
The well-structured narrative becomes quite apparent at this point when Su-hyeon’s first relationship speeds by and the love story appears too good to be true. The hints of oddity and slight gaps in the first act are soon addressed in the second, once the perspective switches to Mi-yeong’s sister, Seon-yeong and we witness her escalating encounters with Su-hyeon as things get spicy.
This second act starts off strongly, but Jang dedicates far too much time to it that it grows tiresome and repetitive. Once we get into the third act, the film really hits its high point, finding the perfect combination of speed and substance and tying the story together with a satisfying ending.
However, the unique script does suffer from a certain lack of emotional power for a romantic-comedy. Jang focuses on comedy and sacrifices our investment in the romances for laughs. The selfish first sister is solely depicted in an unlikeable light, and the bookish second sister grows terribly annoying with all the time dedicated to her. Viewers will be far more interested in discovering where certain events fit in the plot, or waiting for the next joke than hoping for love to bloom between these characters on screen.
Instead, the script simply gives all the power to Lee Byung-hun as Su-hyeon, a man who never lets up in charm and wit. His character is crafted to be the epitome of the perfect male, and Lee puts in a strong (yet sensitive!) performance to convince us of it at every moment as he juggles multiple problems, wins over everyone around him and seduces women without breaking a sweat. Even more remarkable is that he manages to do all this while somehow remaining the most lovable character of the film. It’s a welcome change to the flawed, bumbling Cha Tae-hyun type male protagonist who often ends up as the victim of the relationship in these genre pics.
The entire picture may be a light, entertaining ride, but beyond some laughs in the first hour of the film, it’s difficult to claim it does much but set up the structure for the satisfying final act and ending. It’s not as perfect a film as its protagonist, but in the end, it altogether does feel worth a viewer’s time—rom-com and Lee Byung-hun enthusiasts especially will be pleased.
Reviewed by Tarun
