Yeo-rae is a top model and star who has taken South Korea by storm. But she learns how inconstant fame can be, after her awkward performance and poor pronunciation in a big-budget space movie turns her into a laughingstock. Exhausted, disheartened and distraught, she decides to take a vacation to Qualla, a small Pacific island nation. Her trip starts off badly, but then she meets global real estate developer Jonathan Na (“jon-na”, incidentally, is a somewhat rude expression in Korean), who saves her from a pack of thieves, and promptly proposes marriage.

Cut to seven years later, when the couple flies to spend some time in Korea. Jonathan, it turns out, is not the Prince Charming he initially seemed to be. Yeo-rae is desperately unhappy and constantly pinned under Jonathan’s watchful, controlling eye. She also learns the depth of his cruelty and violence towards anyone who crosses him. Yet a window of opportunity opens when she discovers that her next-door neighbor Bum-woo, a young man studying to re-take the university entrance exam, is one of her biggest fans. Together they hatch various schemes to help Yeo-rae escape her captivity and lead a happy life – all of which involve killing Jonathan.

With a strong performance at the domestic box office, albeit in a year that has few standout local hits so far, it seems almost like a fairy tale in itself for Lee Won-Suk. Of course, such gaps in a career are hardly uncommon in Korean cinema. And it’s not like he disappeared completely, being involved in a reality TV programme about filmmaking, and attached to a Netflix series that has yet to see the light of day. Post-production on Killing Romance had been listed since December 2020, raising the question of whether it was affected by COVID conditions, taken time over (the production would definitely need it), or the film was just held back for more stable cinema audiences to return. One suspects that to a degree, all of the above might be true, but it seems to have been the right decision to make. Scripted by Park Jung-yae, best known for The Beauty Inside, it’s perhaps most interesting to note Killing Romance comes with the backing of another big studio, Warner Bros. Korea.

From the opening scene, there’s a style and palette reminiscent of Wes Anderson. As with How to Use Guys, Lee’s background in advertising gives him a keen eye for lampooning the industry. The Lallaten soft drink Yeo-rae advertises – so beloved by one of the characters he exclaims it’s ‘about to give me diabetes!’ – comes complete with its own, very catchy, jingle. The space movie has its own Vulcan-style salute (and pay attention for a brief cameo from film critic and easternKicks friend Pierce Conran). Then there’s Jonathan’s personal assistants, the identical “Susans”. With a soundtrack by prolific film and TV composer Dalpalan – who seems to be using this as an excuse to let his air down –the film even breaks into musical numbers throughout, including karaoke-style singalong lyrics. If Anderson seems a point of reference point over the production design, stylishly overseen by Shin Yu-jin, then the humour owes much to Stephen Chow. The gag with Jonathan’s moustache, at least, is borrowed from Chow’s The Mermaid.

There might be a dramatic shift in tone when Jonathan is revealed as the controlling scumbag he is, but it seems right not to make light of that sort of situation. Perhaps the only detractor is, as is often the case with films like this, there is so much invention and world-building in the first 15 minutes or so that the pace can’t help but lag a little afterwards. This such a fun movie, best seen with a big audience, that should see Lee return to international audiences, and he deserves it.