[Max Movie]
Published May 31, 2007
By Gyuhan Kim
The temptation of love is like the wind—it always arrives unexpectedly. Regardless of age or gender, no one knows who will fall in love, when, or how. People bury dreams of romantic, ideal love deep in their hearts. When everyday life begins to feel dull and fragmented, they fall into love more easily. This is also why those worn out by the hamster wheel of monotonous married life are easily seduced by the lure of infidelity.
The moment love turns into a desire to possess someone as one’s own, it inevitably heads toward ruin. In Never Forever, the two leads—Jihah (played by Ha Jung-woo) and Sophie (played by Vera Farmiga)—begin with sex devoid of love. No conversation is necessary between them. But as their encounters continue, they begin to be drawn to one another.
The film does not kindly explain what causes Sophie—who seems to live a life without lack, married to a successful Korean-American lawyer named Andrew (played by David McInnis)—to fall for Jihah, who resembles her husband. Instead, it shows the difference between sex within marriage and sex between lovers, leaving the audience to infer the reasons themselves.
Stories of two people who begin with meaningless sex and slowly crave something more are a staple of adultery films. But what sets Never Forever apart is the agency of its female lead. The film comes into its own in the latter half, as the perspective shifts to Sophie. When her husband learns of her affair, he says he can forgive everything if she aborts the child—but Sophie refuses. The film shines in its cool, unflinching ending, where it does not advocate for the restoration of the marriage despite the destructive consequences of infidelity.
Director Gina Kim, who earned recognition at prestigious domestic and international film festivals for her documentaries Gina Kim’s Video Diary and Faces of Seoul, infuses constant tension into her first commercial feature Never Forever, drawing the audience out of passive spectatorship and into the screen itself. Though its subject is infidelity, Never Forever is far from cliché. With bold depictions of female desire, the film explores a distorted relationship that has begun to derail, prompting viewers to imagine a ‘second love’ yet to begin.
As mentioned earlier, Never Forever is not a film that sensationalizes its provocative subject matter. Gina Kim breaks free from the conventionality of the theme, presenting a story of ‘transgressive love’ that stirs the viewer’s everyday emotions and routines. With sparse dialogue, Kim masterfully captures the subtle emotional shifts between two people who cross societal taboos of class, race, and adultery—using only the movement of the camera.
This film especially stands out for its acting and music. Ha Jung-woo, who showed a fresh trajectory in roles like The Unforgiven, Time, and The Fox Family, embodies Jihah—a man who sold love to bring his lover to America—with tailored precision. His tender gaze, as he falls into a forbidden love with a white woman, is likely to captivate many female viewers. The sensual camera movements that trace every curve of Vera Farmiga’s delicate figure—forced into betrayal for the sake of a happy marriage—stand in for Sophie’s own desiring gaze. The beautiful score by renowned British composer Michael Nyman, known for The Piano, vividly conveys the delicate emotions of two lovers falling into love.