A Year-End Medley - Film Review

A Year-End Medley - Film Review

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Posted 2024-07-03 by Mindo Koerberfollow
Image taken from www.hancinema.net

If you like Hugh Grant and Keira Knightley’s Love Actually, you will love A Year-End Medley (2021), a South Korean film packed with big names of South Korean actors and actresses.

A Year End Medley is about intertwined stories of people who work at Emross Hotel as well as guests who come and stay at this hotel during Christmas and New Year.

Kim Yong-jin (played by Lee Dong-wook) is CEO of Emross Hotel. One day, he was forced to stay at a hotel after an emergency renovation had to be done at his house. Childhood trauma made him dislike everything in odd numbers. Everything in his life has to be an even number; the temperature in his room has to be an even number, everyone who knocks on his door has to be knocking an even number of times, and of course, he has to stay on an even floor and even room number at the hotel. This makes hotel staff have to put in extra work to make their boss happy.

Baek Lee-young (played by Won Jin-ah) is a contract worker as a maid at this hotel. She also likes to dance and sing and was practising for an audition while cleaning Yong-jin’s room. She accidentally dropped her necklace while working at Yong-jin’s hotel room. She went back to Yong-jin’s room the next day and found an envelope with her necklace inside it. Lee-young and Yong-jin met again several times after that, and even Yong-jin decided to come to church with Lee-young on Christmas Eve. That’s when someone saw them together and spread the rumour that Lee-young is a gold digger.

Kang Jae-yong (plated by Kang Ha-neul) is a man devastated after being dumped by his girlfriend, who doesn't believe in him as he keeps failing on his uni entry exam and also working at a very low-salary job. Jae-yong decides to kill himself but wants to make the suicide plan grand by taking his own life at a big hotel such as Emross Hotel. But Lee-young finds his suicide draft note when she cleans his room, which he tossed under a coffee table. Lee-young brought this finding to management. One of the managers suggests kicking him out of the hotel to avoid any scandal to Emross Hotel, but Yong-ji is determined to save him instead and asks all his employees to keep an eye on Jae-yong during his stay at the hotel. Yong-ji even praises Lee-young for her effort to keep the best service to Emross Hotel guests. During his stay at the hotel, Jae-yong developed a friendship with a wake-up call lady, Soo-yeon (played by Im Yoon-ah), who had a beautiful voice that captivated Jae-yong’s heart.

One of the hotel staff who has an important role in making sure Jae-yong is saved is Captain Park So-jin, the Floor Manager at this hotel. On that day, So-jin just found out that her former band member, Son Seong-hyo, whom she had a crush on over the last 15 years, would get married at the Emross Hotel on New Year’s Eve. She is devastated and tries the best that she can to cancel this wedding. Besides looking after Jae-yong and plotting a cunning plan to cancel Seong-hyo’s wedding, So-jin is also busy helping Lee Jin-ho, a rich surgeon, who often comes for dinner dates at this hotel but always fails to swoon his blind date. So-jin even gives him a little note full of the do’s and the don'ts of dating to help Jin-ho win the ladies' hearts. But, unfortunately, they all fail.

Meanwhile, Catherine, Seong-hyo’s future mother-in-law, approaches Kang Sang-gyu (played by Jung Jin-young), the doorman at the hotel. Sang-gyu was Catherine’s lover when both of them were in high school. For some reason, Sang-gyu was imprisoned while Catherine was pregnant with their baby. To save her parents from embarrassment, Catherine agrees to marry a man that she doesn't love and asks Sang-gyu to marry someone that he loves after being released from jail but hopes they can meet again one day.

All the stories of these people intertwined and affected each other's destiny on New Year’s Eve at Emross Hotel. A Year-End Medley provides hope for the new year to come as each character in this movie receives a happy ending. Due to its popularity, the film was released as a new six-part extended version of 30 minutes each. All six episodes were released on TV the next year. The success of this movie is not only because unique and beautiful love story but also because big names in it. You can also see Lee Dong-wook acting in Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, Kang Ha-neul in Angel Eyes, Jung Jin-young in Angel Eyes and Queen of Tears, Im Yoon-ah in King the Land and K2, and Won Jin-ah in Just Between Lovers.

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#romantic
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%wneverywhere
289650 - 2024-07-03 06:12:34

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