‘Beautiful Dreamer’ review: Sensitive South Korean drama explores the impact of suicide

Dir/scr: Lee Kwang-kuk. South Korea. 2025. 109mins

In Stunning Dreamer, a girl decides to lastly scatter her husband’s ashes and put his reminiscence to relaxation years after he took his personal life, to the objection of her college pupil daughter who is just not able to say a ultimate goodbye to her father. Mom and daughter conflict, delicately, whereas wrestling with their emotions of disgrace and sorrow. Author/director Lee Kwang-kuk is completed at dealing with emotional fallout and, whereas he doesn’t have a lot new to say about grief, guilt, blame and the stigma of suicide, he has nonetheless crafted a delicate exploration of those themes.

Blurs the traces between previous and current, creativeness and actuality

This Busan premiere is the fifth characteristic from Lee, a former assistant director for Hong Sang-soo. Lee’s earlier movie, A Wing And A Prayer (2022) – a coming-of-age story set towards Korea’s financial turbulence which additionally bowed at Busan – moved away from the whimsy of his earlier work, and he follows that pattern right here. With no trace of a distracting rating, and dishing out with the formal gildings of his previous movies, Lee retains the lens skilled squarely on the ladies on the centre of the story to create a grounded, real looking work. It might properly convey the director his broadest publicity up to now.

Lee’s exploration of lingering ache and letting go within the wake of surprising tragedy begins in Seoul, the place college pupil Su-yeon (Hong Seung-hee, The Moon) is dodging her landlord – who additionally seems to be her solely good friend – and largely conserving to her sombre self. Throughout the nation within the japanese coastal metropolis of Dongbae, her mom In-seon (Lee Ji-hyun) is equally remoted, operating a visitor home and attending grief counselling periods with Jong-soon (Lee Ju-won), with whom she has grow to be shut. 

Each Su-yeon and In-seon are mourning the dying by suicide of their father and husband Ji-ho (Kwan Hyuk) three years earlier. The anniversary of his dying is approaching, and In-seon desires some form of closure and to place the previous behind her. As if placing an exclamation level on the problem, she’s additionally making an attempt to promote the household dwelling. Su-yeon, in the meantime, refuses to even contemplate her mom’s needs or her personal psychological wellbeing. More and more remoted, she insists it’s too quickly to only get on along with her life.

Stunning Dreamer’s lack of Korean specificity emphasises the universality of the combined feelings that come up when somebody near us takes their very own life. Su-yeon and In-seon stay trapped in confusion, resentment and rage, and have their emotions thrown into even better turmoil when Ji-ho’s oldest good friend Sang-woo (Shin Ah-jin) drunkenly suggests his dying was partially In-seon’s fault. Is that truthful? Not by an extended shot, nevertheless it shakes In-seon exactly as a result of it touches on her largest concern. It’s a quiet second that each Shin and Lee play completely, lacing their performances with equal elements humiliation and terror.

Lee blurs the traces between previous and current, creativeness and actuality, as In-seon and Su-yeon bear in mind Ji-ho in their very own methods, however tones down any surrealism or irreverence. Cinematographer Kim Hyung-koo’s (Reminiscences of Homicide) unfettered compositions let the world transfer on round In-Seon and Su-yeon, making it appear as if they’re operating in place – an impression underscored by awkward interactions with shopkeepers, outdated mates, and family members making an attempt to disinvite them to household capabilities for concern of unhealthy karma. 

That is the kind of intimate, internalized movie that may solely be as affecting as its leads. For the overwhelming majority of the operating time, tv veteran Lee Ji-hyun proves as much as the duty, solely often falling into recognizable small-screen mannerisms. She is matched scene-for-scene by Hong, who retains Su-yeon from teetering into the abyss of egocentric brat. When mom and daughter lastly have an overdue, if stilted, however finally hopeful dialog, it’s as shut as director Lee comes to creating a grand assertion a couple of social situation. As a complete, Stunning Dreamer alerts a welcome evolution in his filmmaking.