by Ian Foo
More Than Blue is a remake of the 2009 South Korean melodramatic film of the same name by Taiwanese director Gavin Lin Hsiao-chien. The film attempts to paint a love story in spectacular fashion, slightly overdoing it with baffling antics guided by their profound love for each other.
The film tells the story of protagonist K and his love interest Cream who both met when they were 16, forging a strong bond with each other in the process and eventually moving in together. K finds himself working at a records label and Cream became a lyricist as they both continue to live together; not as lovers but as bosom buddies, constantly offering each other encouragement and emotional support throughout the film.
As the story progresses, K is bedevilled by leukemia and keeps it to himself while making it his number one priority to see to Cream’s welfare by ensuring that she finds the right guy before he dies. With K’s plight unbeknownst to Cream, she ends up dating a dentist whose cheating fiancee was later approached by K, requesting she break off her engagement with the dentist in favour of Cream’s happiness.
By defining love as someone else’s happiness, the story unfolds into a complex narrative with each character setting out on different agendas which turns the movie into a convoluted plot. It is revealed that Cream actually found out about K’s terminal illness through the discovery of some pills much earlier. She then makes it her point to meet a guy capable of taking care of her so as to appease K and put him at ease as he inches closer to death, again, unbeknownst to K.
The plot is overambitious; the admirable actions of K took focal point but were made insignificant once Cream’s actions were revealed. The notion of love and happiness gets lost along the way with K’s intentions drawing Cream into making a series of decisions afflicting the both of them.
The film set out with purpose but offered way too much that it left too little to be gained, leaving unanswered how two people belonging to each other can be set even further apart with time running out.
Ultimately, More Than Blue would be a suitable movie to take your date out to watch… that is, if your date isn’t a cinephile.
