[HanCinema's Film Review] "Good Morning"

Soo-mi (played by Kim Hwan-hee) is a teenager who doesn't have much to live for. She has to help her mom at work at a restaurant, assisting the boorish guests there. School life isn't much better, where Soo-mi is subject to intense bullying. So perhaps inevitably, Soo-mi contemplates suicide, and is only stopped from putting her plan into action by Nurse Jeong (played by Yoo Sun), who invites her to come to a place where people learn how to die.

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That cryptic description is in reference to the hospice where Nurse Jeong works. While framed around the subject of teen suicide, "Good Morning" is actually every bit as generally positive as its titles implies. Despite the fact that nearly every character in the movie expects to die in the near future, they have a surprisingly positive attitude. At one point we even get a wedding scene. Little stories like that predominate throughout "Good Morning" although there's always the dark subtext that they could be cut short any time by someone actually dying.

One such subplot that only develops later on involves Grandpa Park, played by Lee Soon-jae with his usual curmudgeonly attitude, and his own backstory where there's more than initially seems to be there. Some of these descriptions no doubt make "Good Morning" sounds fairly mysterious, but the movie's premise is for the most part pretty straightforward. It's the story of healing from past trauma by living very literally close to death, and accepting that another day of health is better than the alternative.

While I didn't dislike "Good Morning" there's surprisingly little to say about a movie like this, even bearing in mind that the slow-moving sentimental flick isn't exactly the kind of thing that inspires a lot of commentary to begin with. Despite implying that Soo-mi still works at the restaurant and still endures bullying, these factors do not recur throughout the story. Soo-mi's solution to those problems seems to be to just ignore them.

That's probably about as good a solution as can be expected really, but the unwillingness of "Good Morning" to directly commit to the more existentially dreadful aspects of its premise hurts it. There is, of course, death in this movie, at multiple points. The hospice is, after all, the place where people learn to die. Yet such scenes are accepted with relatively tacit ease compared to moments of Nurse Jeong's own backstory, which suggest a personal reason for stopping Soo-mi on the bridge like she did.

"Good Morning" has multiple convenient dramatic coincidences like this. Yoo Sun is fortunately a good enough actress that she sells her own character's trauma convincingly. The rest of the cast is just...OK. Lee Soon-jae is definitely putting in a lower effort performance than he did for the similarly themed "Stand By Me" and "Romang" where he did, admittedly, have an actual leading role. Don't be fooled by the poster- "Good Morning" is definitely more of an ensemble piece. Lee Soon-jae's presence is fairly sporadic until the climax.

Review by William Schwartz

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"Good Morning" is directed by Cha Bong-joo, and features Kim Hwan-hee, Yoo Sun, Lee Soon-jae, Song Jae-rim, Park Hyun-sook, Lee Yoon-ji. Release date in Korea: 2022/05/25.