Intimate Strangers (Review)

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

Quote by Gabriel García Márquez

Plot summary:

Lifelong friends and married couple Seok-ho and Ye-jin, invite their close friends over for a housewarming dinner. They end up playing a game where they must share all new incoming messages and calls of their cell phones. Initially starting off lightly, the game gets more and more uncomfortable as hidden truths start to surface, making them begin to feel more like strangers.

Director: Lee Jae-Kyu

Writer: Bae Se-Young, Lee Jae-Kyu

Cast:

Yoo Hae-jin as Tae-soo

Cho Jin-woong as Seok-ho

Lee Seo-jin as Joon-mo

Yum Jung-ah as Soo-hyun, Tae-soo's wife

Kim Ji-soo as Ye-jin, Seok-ho's wife

Song Ha-yoon as Se-kyung, Joon-mo's wife

Yoon Kyung-ho as Young-bae

Review:

At the first time I heard about this movie, I was surprised why such a simple movie could reach 3.37 million for a second weekend. It is a Korean remake of the smash hit Italian movie "Perfect Strangers also. In my opinion, a remake movie will already have many spoilers spreading all over on the internet. Fortunately, I have not yet watched the original one, so the excitement to see the ending is on a high level of curiosity.

After I watched the movie, I could say it's really GREATTT !

Actually, I am not really into a movie who have many dialogs. However, the director gave much the attention of how to make the viewers keep watch every detail /(per) second scene in this movie. Every minute my mind was guessing what kinda a secret will reveal next. And... the ending! Wow, I got it what is the purpose to show all of the interactions between you, friends and your family.

Again, everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.

I would like to give applause to the director (Lee Jae-Kyu) and the casts. The director is pretty smart to put all of the scenes in a precise order. For the actors, well, I can not agree more. Most of all the casts are senior (even for Song Ha Yoon, the youngest one, she already works in acting for 15 years) in Korean movie who know how to build the intention and chemistry to each other. The movie mostly took the scenes just in an apartment. Therefore, the success of this film really depended on how all of the casts act.

I also read an article that the news of how good Intimate Strangers was spreading by mouth to mouth. So the promotion did not lie if the viewers self were willing to spread the excellent review of this movie. In conclusion, I understand why Intimate Strangers became the only Korean Comedy Film of 2018 with more than 4 Million moviegoers. There are two essential points:

- The plot is filled with many unexpected twists and turns, and again, there is a twist behind a twist.

- The amazing casts who bring such their very well descriptive and strong characters.

My personal opinion of Song Ha Yoon:

It's true that I wanna watch the movie because of her. I admit she did a REALLY well play. (Attention for a bit spoiler!) Near to the end, my heart wanna fell when I see her turn in 180 degrees, like ahhhhh..... when a secret was revealed, everyone related to you will change as well.

After watching her act in the movie (the last time she did in 2014), I really want to see her again in other amazing films. Thanks for Intimate Strangers movie, now I remember how good her works in Baby and Me (2008), Fly High (2009) and The whistle-blower (2014) movie.