Everything feels secondhand sourced in Korean writer/director Lee Jong-pil’s sudsy romance for regular guy Moon Sang-min and regular gal Ko Ah-sung who meet and incrementally fall for each other at the department store they work at. He’s new there, a tall shy type starting part-time in the parking garage where, many floors above, Plain Jane Ko already works. Plus Byun Yo-han ile hanging around as third-wheel to offer tips & world-weary advice as philosopher, musician & comic cut-up. Writer Lee’s best idea shows how the large department store functions like an extension of high school with cliques and strict pecking orders, a place where uniformed glam girls rule the roost selling designer goods on upper floors, and parking attendants work, appropriately enough, in the basement. Plenty of gossip on who’s seeing whom, too. The staff watching live on video chat. Most of the film script worked out in a fog of predetermined fatalism, noble renunciation of desire and life-changing miscues. With a colorful look that tries to hide its condescending view on the also-rans of this world. As if director Lee had put in an order of MARTY/’55 and AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER/’57 smothered with Wong Kar-Wai secret sauce.
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