TRACES OF LOVE (Korea, 2006)
Directed by: Kim Dae-Sung
Starring: Yu Ji-Tae, Kim Ji-Su, Eom Ji-Weon

“It’s all disappearing,” a character says at the beginning of TRACES OF LOVE, looking out over the Korean landscape, and over the course of this movie, it all does: love, life and happiness all go up like smoke. Starting in 1995, TRACES is about a public prosecutor, Hyun-Woo (Yu Ji-Tae, the bad guy from Oldboy) and his fiancé, Min-Joo (Kim Ji-Su). Their future looks bright until a real life disaster intrudes, and Min-Joo loses her life in an accident that might remind New Yorkers a little too much of September 11th. Fast-forward ten years and all that early promise is gone. Min-Joo is a locked-down, clench-jawed jackass prosecutor whose career is going off the rails as his office gets involved in a political scandal and he’s ordered to take a vacation. He decides to follow he and Min-Joo’s honeymoon route and as he travels through Korea the ghosts of the life he might have had come back to haunt him and past and present blend into one seamless whole as he realizes just how desperately he wants to move on.

Director Kim Dae-Sung (Bungee Jumping of their Own, Blood Rain) places his tiny, fragile characters against massive, breathtaking landscapes and his movie accords a respect for the spirituality of simply looking at nature that hasn’t been seen since the quasi-mystical landscape painting of the 19th Century. This is a pitch-perfect melodrama that doesn’t overstay its welcome, distilled to its purest essence and offered to the audience, as cold and refreshing as water from a mountain spring.