Review: A Werewolf Boy (2012)
It's the first week of summer, and in celebration we are introspecting just far enough to find what—historically—sparks our truest joys. For me, this is going back to my roots and allowing myself a moment to indulge in warm-lit, saccharine, fantasy romance, and this week it's just a (personal) bonus that it happens to be werewolf content as well. Jo Sunghee's A Werewolf Boy is a product of its time in the best of ways, by which I mean it's like they condensed a whole K-Drama romcom into two hours without sacrificing any of the cuteness or emotion—and I struggle to watch whole drama series, so I made out like a bandit with this one.
The story follows the recollection of a now-elderly Suni (Lee Youngran) as the memories of her time in her country home 47 years prior come flooding back as she debates selling it in present day. To escape the bad city air as a result of her lung condition, Suni (Park Boyoung) had moved to the country with her family, and she wasn't thrilled about it given they're also indebted to her late father's business partner who owned the property—and they're periodically taunted by his pompous son, Jitae (Yoo Yeonseok), as well. Within their first few days, Suni steps out in the night to investigate a sound in the barn, and the next day she finds a wild boy hidden in their yard.
After deciding he must be an orphan left over from the war, Suni's mother (Jang Youngnam) takes him in for the time being and calls him Cheolsu (Song Joongki). Suni quickly tires of Cheolsu's feral habits, like scarfing down all food in sight and howling at the moon, and draws a connection between his unruly behavior to that of an untrained dog. In order to make being around him more bearable, Suni takes it upon herself to teach him simple commands like waiting before eating, for which he's rewarded with food and head pats, and she soon finds herself less annoyed and more fascinated by him. Cheolsu, eager to learn from her, is obedient to a fault, and they form an unlikely bond rooted in fierce loyalty.
In terms of story, A Werewolf Boy does what it sets out to do, and it does well not to disappoint its target audience; it's cute, it's funny, and it's captivating. There are a few loose ends throughout, like the main conflict of Jitae being hellbent on marrying Suni for no apparent reason—naturally, he grows jealous of Cheolsu, and makes it his business to make the lot of them pay for inconveniencing him, I guess. While some pieces like this are a little silly, the driving force is, of course, Suni and Cheolsu.
Love is hard to describe, and there are so many ways to portray it that it can be difficult to decide which is romantic, platonic, or something else altogether. Suni's relationship with Cheolsu finds a middle ground between romantic and platonic love; on the one hand he's a handsome young dude who'd do anything for her, but his dog-like manner is ever present, and it solidifies him as something of a pet. While I'd classify this movie as a romance, there's a purity in their relationship that can't quite be described as "romantic" alone—they're happier together, even while their shared everyday is quiet and mundane.
The plot is simple enough, but it's also quite moving (I'm not going to lie about it, I cried! I can't even remember the last movie I cried at, but I didn't think this would be the next one!). This is also a very refreshing take on werewolf content, which is often in an all-horror context, and that context is almost always, "ahh, there's a mysterious death in the town, ahh it's a wolf, ahh who is the wolf," or whatever. This kind of romance that's portrayed almost exclusively as a kind of emotional intimacy is so good, it's like candy, and yeah I cried, but this is still a feel-good movie that I love.