Jun Ji-hyun vs Sandra Bullock: Il Mare and The Lake House Hollywood remake, compared
- Moments of clarity help anchor Il Mare’s concept of a romance between people who live two years apart, and sensitive performances make it sincere and engaging
- The Lake House, however, doesn’t work, and is filled with so many plot holes that even Bullock and co-star Keanu Reeves can’t fix them
This review contains major spoilers of Il Mare (2000) and The Lake House (2006).
The best remakes take a strong concept and run with it, so it’s possible to discern a dialogue between the two films. Unfortunately in the case of Korean effort Il Mare and its Hollywood update The Lake House, that isn’t what happens. After all, it’s hard to have a dialogue in different languages, especially when one is all upper case.
A time-slip romance directed by Lee Hyun-seung (Hindsight), Il Mare charts an impossible love affair between two residents of the same remote beach house. Their problem? They live two years apart.
The film begins with failed architect Sung-hyun (Lee Jung-jae) moving into the eponymous Il Mare, a handsome structure on a suitably lonely shore. In the ornate letterbox outside, he finds a Christmas card from the previous tenant, frustrated voice-over artist Eun-joo (Jun Ji-hyun), asking him to forward her mail.
Only she isn’t really the previous tenant, but the next tenant, writing from the future, and the pair begin an awkward epistolary romance.
