About This Film
Yu Hyun-mok will be forever remembered for a film that is considered among the all-time best of Korean cinema, “Aimless Bullet“. Before reaching the apogee of his career, however, he had to start somewhere, and “Forever With You“, his earliest surviving film, is a production much different from the aforementioned, mostly following the melodramatic rules of the era, although with a few cinematic “innovations” that actually make it stand out, to a point at least.
Synopsis
The protagonist of the story is Gwang-pil, who, as the movie starts, is in prison but retains his cheerfulness against the teasing of another cellmate, since his love for his “woman”, Ae-ran, keeps him from letting his situation bring him down. Soon, Gwang-pil begins to narrate his story. At a young age, he was a very poor youth who also had to take care of his sick mother, after his father had abandoned them. His only ray of happiness is Ae-ran, a local girl who works at a bakery also trying to support her family. Being desperate for money, both to sustain himself and his mother and to move his romance forward, Gwang-pil falls with two petty thieves, with the three of them eventually robbing a poor woman, before they decide to rob a US Army depot. Instigated by the lack of jobs in the area, but also by a rival for Ae-ran’s heart, Dal-soo, Gwang-pil agrees to go on the job but finds himself the only one arrested after the failed attempt and sent in prison for the first time. However, he manages to escape in order to see Ae-ran once more, only to get involved in an accident that has him back in prison, this time for 10 years, which is where the story finds him. His cheerfulness, however, derives from the notion that Ae-ran keeps sending him food and clothes every week.
