Warning: This article contains spoilers for all episodes of Melo Movie.
Netflix’s latest Korean drama, Melo Movie, out just in time for Valentine’s Day, is a romantic story about a film critic who loves movies and a film director who hates them, and how the medium brings them together. Choi Woo-sik (Parasite, Our Beloved Summer, A Killer Paradox) stars as Ko Gyeom, a boy who grew up watching films as a way to escape the pain of the real world. Gyeom was raised by his big brother, Ko Jun (Her Private Life’s Kim Jae-wook), following the deaths of their parents. Struggling to make ends meet, the two rent an apartment above a video store, and thus, an obsession is born. When Gyeom grows up, he doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do, but he knows it will have to do with the movies.
Park Bo-young (Light Shop, Daily Dose of Sunshine, Strong Girl Do Bong-soon) plays Kim Mu-bee—whose first name is the Korean pronunciation of the word “movie”—who grows up hating movies. Her dad works in the industry, and is largely absent from her life because of it. When he dies while away on a job, she sees it as proof that he loved movies more than he loved her. When Mu-bee has to decide on a career path, she chooses the film industry with a clear aim in mind: She wants to make the movie her father never had the chance to make, and show that movie-making is not all that it’s cracked up to be.
The two are seemingly polar opposites, but when Gyeom is cast as an extra on a film set where Mu-bee works, he falls in love at first sight. He spends the coming weeks convincing her to give him a shot. But when she finally does, kissing him in a snowlit alley, he almost immediately ghosts her. It won’t be until five years later that the two meet up again. This time, Mu-bee is promoting her first feature film as a director, and Ko Gyeom is a film critic. Will they be able to find their way back to one another? Melo Movie explores this question and much more in 10 episodes that…
