Young love's tragedy is timeless in Once We Were Us, human connection rules in amiable Rental Family

ONCE WE WERE US (PG13) 14 minutes, opens on Jan 22 KKK K

- John Lui

The story: On a flight to South Korea, former lovers Lee Eun-ho (Koo Kyo-hwan) and Han Jeong-won (Moon Ga-young) meet i by coincidence after a 10-year separation.Through a series of flashbacks to 2008, their relationship is charted, from their first meeting to turbulent romance, Hy with each navigating the other’s emotional fragilities in the midst of : a national economic crisis.

Fans of the 2018 romance Us And Them can relax: This South Korean adaptation of the Chinese hit stands confidently on its own, featuring a reworked coming-of-age element grounded in the grinding economic conditions of 2008 in Seoul.

Director Kim Do-Young (Kim-Ji-young, Born 1982, 2019) extracts powerful performances from both leads as they transition from naive college-age teens to adults over the course of the film.

It is enough to say the couple begin in a happy place and, as it usually goes with these films, it ends not quite at the other end of the emotional spectrum, but close : to it.