‘Spring Night’ Review: Kang Mi-ja Returns With a Compact Co-Dependency Drama

variety.com:

Siddhant Adlakha The second feature from Kang Mi-ja — and her first after a gap of 17 years — “Spring Night” is a tender, compact relationship drama about ships passing in the night, buoyed by a pair of stellar performances working in completely different modes.

Adapted from Kwon Yeo-sun’s novel, its tale of an alcoholic woman and an arthritic man meeting in middle age has a fairytale-like quality, and an oblique telling that skips through time in both unique and familiar ways.

While this temporal hopscotch helps it re-create intriguing sensations, it prevents the film from completely connecting, despite the occasionally shattering moments its actors create The way Kang introduces her characters has a definitive quality bordering on prescriptive, but given the film’s mere 67-minute runtime, it proves economical.

We first meet the soft-spoken Su-hwan (Kim Seol-jin) as he prepares to attend a friend’s wedding afterparty, while another acquaintance accosts him with questions about his financial woes, unaware of the health issues Su-hwan is facing.