It is quite hard to stand out in a clustered, arguably bloated crowd of romantic films, but the aptly titled “Sweet & Sour” cannot be accused of feigning effort to try. Armed with an ambitious plot twist, Lee Gye-Byeok's adaption of Kurumi Inui's book “Initiation Love” may not get close to hitting a home run, but still leaves some sort of impact on the viewer.
Central to the story is Jung Da-eun (Chae Soo-bin), a tender nurse who looks after her patients with the sort of attentive care that may even stretch too far. A stark contrast to the stone-faced head nurse, Jung naturally makes an impact on the young Hepatitis patient Jang-hyeok (Lee Woo-je). Overweight and rather immature, he's shocked that he seems to be making a good impression on his crush, and when the two end up awkwardly intertwined after his discharge, the scene is set for a fascinating romantic comedy.
Unfortunately, that does not come. Instead, we're greeted to a rather melodramatic story involving the older Jang-hyeok (Jang Ki-yong), who has scored a contract job at a conglomerate far away from the couple's home base, and finds himself growing apart from his increasingly hopeless partner. It is run-of-the-mill stuff, and Lee's narrative runs through fairly predictable set-pieces of an affair and pregnancy, both of which have little impact, whilst the 100-minute runtime seems to limp through to its ending.
With that being said, when one final cliche looks set to be pulled out of the bag in the last scene, the twist is one that genuinely shocks viewers, and works seamlessly. Smart, witty and succinct, it almost feels like a thank you for getting through the plodding mawkishness that preceded, to an extent of also rescuing the film from being entirely forgettable. Still, it does not redeem some of the poor characterisation (all of the leads are somewhat unpleasant, or at the very least ignorantly self-centred), nor the fact that there seems to be no underlying meaning to any of what has unfolded, aside from the fact work can harm relationships, or genuine consequences.
Given the fact they are dealt reasonably poor hands, it is to their credit that both Chae Soo-bin and Jang Ki-yong perform well in their roles. The former is believable as a naive nurse, one who cares for her partner but almost wilfully allows him to cross boundaries, until of course it gets too much. Meanwhile, the latter is serviceable as the moderately egotistical Jang-hyeok, who neglects everything around him in favour of a potentially fleeting office romance, and for the sake of his unstable career.
On a technical level, nothing about Park Young-joon's cinematography is particularly memorable, but the point about the sleek conglomerate life compared to the modest household Chae resides in is made astutely. Furthermore, the traffic jam scenes are well shot, giving a sense of restlessness and urgency to those involved in them.
Overall, “Sweet & Sour” is far from a great movie. It has plenty of flaws, feels overlong yet at the same time underdeveloped, and suffers from a lack of an investable protagonist. The twist does deserve credit, though, even if it arguably should have come earlier to allow us to see more of a fleshed out resolution.
