ONE FINE SPRING DAY | synopsis
DIRECTOR:
HUR JIN-HO

When love utters, is there a sound to be captured?

Sound engineer Sang Woo embarks on a recording trip on a cold winter day. His newly acquainted client -a local DJ named Eun Soo- wants to include the sounds of the countryside in her upcoming broadcast. In the next few days, the two travel about the breathtaking Korea South in the quest of nature's most sensual: air drifting through a forest of bamboos, water stroking surfaces of emerging stones, distant chimes, indigenous folksongs, and the soothing silence of late night snow... all captured on tapes as well as in the hearts of the two youngsters. Sang Woo and Eun Soo soon realize that they have been listening to something stunningly beautiful -the growing tenderness between two strangers.

Their love flourishes as spring comes along. Naturally, separation becomes intolerable and makes longing a mesmerizing effort. "Miss you " -a simple farewell phrase from Eun Soo to Sang Woo's late night call- suffices to set the man off on a 4 hours drive for her at the other end of the country. Whereas Eun Soo, spending hours on a sidewalk, waiting with the same desperation, is looking forward to offering her warmest embrace before dawn breaks.

The couple travel to the coast for another recording session when summer replaces spring. Overwhelmed by his ever-intensifying passion, Sang Woo does not notice the change of tides. His constant pleading for commitment displeases Eun Soo as a painful reminder of her previous marriage. She knows only too well how passion can vanish like a sound; how love, almighty and beautiful, always surrender to its expiry. Nevertheless, Eun Soo proves herself not only a witness of this cruel certainty, but an executor this time. Before Eun Soo can fully detach herself from Sang Woo, she is already infatuated with another man.

"Love changes" converts into an unsolvable puzzle when it is not taken in as a truth in the first place. Even when Sang Woo has agreed to break up, he cannot refrain himself from thinking of Eun Soo, from calling her, stalking her, and even harassing her. Her concrete rejection sets Sang Woo wandering between their former rendezvous, and his mind goes astray. How can love fades away without a trace? ... How can his passion keep on growing, for a person no longer exists in his everyday life? ... Sang Woo foresees himself adapting the path of his father who still mourns for his long-deceased wife. At times, Sang Woo would rather being scatterbrained, like his senile grandmother whose memory only dwells on her happiest years...

ONE FINE SPRING DAY is about the inevitable occurrence in life. Like season altering accordingly by the law of nature, love changes, deteriorates, and perhaps, sublimates. As much as fallen leaves would enrich the soil, the end of Sang Woo's suffering would bring upon the beginning of his enlightenment.