Melo Movie: Episode 1 (First Impressions)

by Dramaddictally

Netflix’s Melo Movie is here, with opposites-attract characters, uncertain courtships, and a box-office feel that’s also an ode to VHS. I came for the actors and they don’t disappoint — with feel-good charm and artful antics — even if I am a little on edge about the overall story.

Editor’s note: Coverage will continue with a series review, so please refrain from discussing any plot points beyond Episode 1 in this post. For a chat zone for spoilers, visit the Drama Hangout.
 
EPISODE 1

I’ve been waiting for this drama to drop! And with this cast — along with screenwriter Lee Na-eun (of Our Beloved Summer) — you can bet I spent my Valentine’s Day with a box of chocolates and Episode 1.

We open with a nine-year-old cinephile whose one life ambition is to watch every movie ever made (on VHS — ‘cause, that’s what there was back then). Luckily, this plucky little kid lives above a video rental store with his overworked HYUNG (Kim Jae-wook, which, hello, this is one way to get my attention in the first five seconds). And the video store owner lets him swap out tapes whenever he wants.

Next thing you know GO GYEOM (Choi Woo-shik), our movie-loving hero, is in high school — and he’s besties with HONG SHI-JOON (Lee Jun-young) and SOHN JOO-AH (Jeon So-ni). The three spend their time watching movies, and Gyeom has become a bit of a snob connoisseur (“I refuse to talk to anyone who hasn’t watched Reservoir Dogs,” he says, as Shi-joon admits he’s never heard of Tarantino).

It’s on one of their movie-watching nights that Gyeom gets the idea to join the movie industry himself — by becoming an actor. Cut to Gyeom at age 26, with a few small parts under his belt, still going to auditions, but not wowing any casting directors.

At one fortuitous audition, he runs into a woman named KIM MU-BI (Park Bo-young). And with a name like “movie,” how could he not be enamored instantly? There’s a slo-mo meet-cute, where he stares as she walks by, until she finally swirls around and catches his gaze. The first thing we hear from our heroine is that she too has only one lifelong dream: to change her stupid name. Lol. (Well, with a setup that long and overdone, it was clear a joke was coming. Well played.)

But while the tone has been comical and light as we got to know Gyeom, Mu-bi’s entrance into the story paints a darker picture. We see her at the same points in time that we saw our hero. At nine, she’s getting into playground fights and telling everyone her parents are dead. But it’s not true, her dad just works a lot and she feels ignored. Her love/hate relationship with movies stems from this, as her dad worked a lower-level job in the film industry while pursuing his dream of making his own movies someday.

“Movies are all you care about,” little Mu-bi says to him (not realizing that it might be the exact reason for her name). She was desperate for his attention, but he was as good as dead to her — until he actually dies when she’s in high school.

This is our heroine’s cross to bear, and as she cleans out her father’s office post-funeral (complete with a Scarface poster for full effect), she finds the movie he was working on. It’s boring. And when we meet her at age 26, working as an assistant on movie sets, she tells us that it’s not to live out her dad’s dream or even to get revenge, but “to show him how pathetic it was to devote his life to a terrible movie.” (I’m skeptical, but I’ll curb my protestations for now.)

This push/pull between the darker and lighter tones of our leads’ personalities is the extent of the episode. And when Gyeom and Mu-bi find themselves working on the same set (where he’s landed a side role in an action film), it’s mostly a string of events to display his extroversion and jovial character against her introversion and need to make herself as quiet and small as possible.

On set, Gyeom begins by observing Mu-bi, not sure why he’s so curious about her (outside of her name), but when he finally begins talking to her, she wishes he wouldn’t (“my new dream is for this guy to stop taking interest me”).

Even with Mu-bi’s sullenness, it’s funny. And the jokes work at this point because we’ve got long stretches where we stay in one character’s perspective or the other, without cutting to the other character’s inner thoughts. After learning how much Gyeom is ramping up his like for her in his head, it can only lead to laughs when we finally see that she’s not feeling the same way at all.

But, the repetition gets long. Mu-bi tells Gyeom to stop talking to her and he keeps hitting on her anyway. They have various coincidental encounters and he takes it as fateful intervention. One day, when they’re off filming in the countryside, they both accidentally get left behind.

He couldn’t be happier, hoping that a bus will never come, and this is the moment we see them move ever-so-slightly closer together. His unending love of movies reminds her of her dad, and even though she’s been telling us that she doesn’t like Gyeom because he draws so much attention to himself, it feels like a shift in motives. Is this the real reason she’s pushing him away? It seems a little canned, but I trust the screenwriter to draw out the nuance further down the line.

Episode 1 mostly takes place over the course of a movie shoot, which gives us a closed-ended setting for our leads’ first encounter, as we move from casting to wrap party. And it’s at the wrap party where things take a turn. Outside the event, in an alleyway, with snow beginning to fall, Mu-bi opens up. “I don’t trust people who only present themselves in high spirits,” she tells Gyeom. He’s constantly down on her dour attitude, but she thinks he’s being inauthentic.

Further, since her dad ignored her and then disappeared from her life for good, she’s afraid of getting close to anyone. (Not to mention, Gyeom specifically reminds her of her dad.) Gyeom responds by asking, “If I tell you my secret, will you like me?” and Mu-bi just stares without answering. Finally, he turns away without saying more, and she grabs his arm, reels him in, and kisses him. He wants to know if it was a mistake. She says no. And so, he leans in for a second kiss.

We end with two ominous pieces of information. The first is that Mu-bi, in that moment, is already feeling like maybe her dark days are coming to an end. However, she tells us that after that night, Gyeom disappeared (as she feared he would).

The second is a clue that Mu-bi may be right about Gyeom’s happy-go-lucky personality. In voiceover, he says, “Maybe she’s just getting through the dark night like I am.” And the very last shot is of a car that’s gone off a bridge into the dark water below. We watch it sink as the episode concludes. And it appears our hero has some childhood trauma of his own.

I’m not totally sure how I feel about this. I loved the opening. And the directing (by Oh Choong-hwan of Castaway Diva, Big Mouth, Start-Up, etc.) is crisp, clear, and luminous — fixated on sharp lines and clean angles with a lot of one-point perspective. It gives the whole thing a big box-office vibe, which, of course, suits the theme.

Also, the cast is phenomenal. It’s hard not to smile when Choi Woo-shik is on screen (ever, in any setting), but here he’s playing the goofy charmer who (seemingly) doesn’t take anything too seriously, making it extra hard not to be captivated. Beyond that, I didn’t talk about our secondary characters, but at this moment, I’m more interested in their courtship than the leads.

Lee Jun-young is playing an aspiring songwriter, with a slacker attitude and a throwback haircut reminiscent of Lee Junho in Just Between Lovers. I love everything about this portrayal so far (and I’m not sure how I became such a huge fan of his in the past few years, but this is only adding fuel to the fire).

His character, Shi-joon, has been in a relationship with the gang’s other high school friend, Joo-ah, for the past seven years. But just as our episode ends, Joo-ah is breaking up with him — right in front of their seven-year-anniversary cake. I’m definitely coming back to see what happened here because their teary eyes are just too much.

Beyond that, I’m unsure about the motives in our main story. What made Mu-bi change her mind? It’s not like we saw them getting closer and learning that they had something in common. It feels more like maybe his puppy pursuit was just wearing her down. We know her wish (deep down) is to be close to someone, and he seemed to be saying it was safe. Maybe that’s all we need for now?

I am curious to know why Gyeom disappeared, but his backstory isn’t calling to me. I’m also a little worried about the pacing. The fun of the first fifteen minutes started to dip in the middle and, by the kiss, that initial sparkiness had already settled. I will be sticking around for the actors and the film-like quality, but the story has to do some work to win my heart.

 
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