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Pierce Conran

This article contains spoilers.
3/5 stars
Lead cast: Namgoong Min, Jeon Yeo-been, Lee Seol, Seo Hyun-woo
Latest Nielsen rating: 4.1 per cent
Our Movie, a melodrama about a director making a melodrama starring a terminally ill woman playing a terminally ill woman, has no interest in defying expectations.
This is a drama that slavishly adheres to pre-existing codes of the well-thumbed terminal-illness-drama playbook, to the point that not only do we know the story of the film within the drama, we also know that the drama around its making will mirror it to a tee.


And that is exactly what happens. Normally, this would be the cardinal sin of filmed drama: predictability. But Our Movie just about gets away with it. This is because the whole point of the story is that there are incontrovertible aspects to life – be they destined or not – that you cannot escape from.
Bubbly cancer patient Lee Da-eum (Jeon Yeo-been, Vincenzo) is going to die. Her doctor father Lee Jung-hyo (Kwon Hae-hyo, Parasyte: The Grey) makes vague mentions of an experimental treatment for her condition, but he is not fooling anyone. Da-eum is not long for this world and nothing can change that.
So we know, more or less from the outset, that Da-eum will not survive the series. The questions that do remain are whether she will manage to finish filming for her debut leading actress role in Love in White, and whether she will fall in love with its director Lee Je-ha (Namgoong Min, Hot Stove League).
The answer to both is yes, and this is also not a surprise. So what, then, is the point of watching Our Movie?

On a macro level, we might say that this is a story about embracing inevitability or wrestling with our finite mortality. More specifically, it is about legacy – leaving our mark on the world before shuffling off this mortal coil.
Da-eum is not just any actress tackling one last role – she is a never-was getting a chance to shoot her one and only film and leave an eternal mark on the world.
It does not matter that she will not be around to see the final product. It only matters that she makes it just long enough for Je-ha to say “that’s a wrap” at the end of her character’s final scene.
Our Movie tenderly embraces formula and sincerely approaches the trappings of its genre, with soft lighting, gorgeous sunsets and glistening rain elevating its prosaic scenes, each brought to vivid and emotional life by a cast of game character actors.

When well told and earnestly performed, a story like this can overleap its narrative limitations by leaning into them. And this is what Our Movie does, and in doing so it becomes a salve.
Da-eum is going to die, but it is OK because she is going out on her own terms and she will be immortalised on the silver screen.
For six weeks, we have been bracing ourselves for this inevitability. And this show does not yank out a deus ex machina at the 11th hour – Da-eum’s father does not turn up with promises of a miracle cure.
And yet, after laying all this groundwork, the show shies away from confronting us with Da-eum’s death.

While various characters go about their days on a sunny spring afternoon, cherry blossom petals blow through the air and softly land on the cheeks of the people who had a connection with Da-eum.
Yet even in a series that routinely eked emotion out of its weather, such as when the first snow of the year fell as Da-eum revealed to the staff of Love in White that she was dying, this floral signal of Da-eum’s passing felt terribly cloying.
This is especially since those not-so-subtle petals are the only indication of Da-eum’s death. We do not see her in her deathbed, we do not see her in pain, nor do we see others in pain, as the show skips past her funeral entirely.
Earlier, there was a scene in which Da-eum and Je-ha had even “rehearsed her death”, but we never get to see the real thing. The story merely picks up a year later, by which time everyone has already moved on.

Then again, what are we to expect from a series that glamorises the making of a glamorised film about dying? Perhaps death, in all its mess and complexity, was simply too ugly to have a spot in this sanitised tale of love and death.
It is a shame that Our Movie distanced itself so thoroughly from the moment of death, as up until then, it had been full of life.
Our Movie is streaming on Disney+.


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After laying all its groundwork, it is a shame that Our Movie shies away from confronting us with its terminally ill character’s end


After laying all its groundwork, it is a shame that Our Movie shies away from confronting us with its terminally ill character’s end.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}After laying all its groundwork, it is a shame that Our Movie shies away from confronting us with its terminally ill character’s end

After laying all its groundwork, it is a shame that Our Movie shies away from confronting us with its terminally ill character’s end