"Happy End" (1999)

In 1999, Korean people were still under severe stress due to the broken national economic structure. Several companies had gone bankrupt and unemployment rate increased from 2% to 8%. Korea had been long enjoying the results of an economical boom and this crisis had a deep impact on the self esteem of the nation.

Amid the storm, there comes "Happy End". This movie tells the story of Bo-Ra. She's a successful career woman and mother of a baby girl whose marriage to the older Ki-Min is less than satisfactory on all levels. Her husband is an unemployed former banker who's finding more than difficult to find another job. He spends his days on domestic chores (taking care of the baby, buying groceries, cleaning the house) and in used book stores. Meanwhile, Bo-Ra is cheating on him with Il-Beom, her co-worker and former lover.

(From this point on, there will be spoilers.)

At some point, Ki-Min finds out about his wife's affair and for a while it seems like he's willing to accept that life. He never confronts her directly, which leaves the audience very unsatisfied. The only confrontational moment is when a somehow regretful Bo-Ra prepares dinner, during which Ki-Min utters "I only wish you will be a good mother to our baby", or something to that effect. But that same night, Bo-Ra gives their daughter some sleeping pills and goes out to meet her lover, which sends the baby to the emergency room. Then, Ki-Min has had enough. He stabs Bo-Ra to death in a extremely graphic scene, framing Il-Beom in the process.

To its credit, "Happy End" tries to portray all sides of this triangle in a fair way. It's easy to understand the motives of everyone involved. And although it shows that women can have the same disrespectful and abusive behavior when in the position of power in a relationship, it also "redeemed" Ki-Min's masculinity with its violent conclusion.

The greatest quality of the ending, in my opinion, is that it doesn't provide satisfaction to anybody in the audience. Ki-Min doesn't deserve what's happening to him and I believe Korean men were shocked to see the extremely graphic nature of the sex scenes between Bo-Ra and Il-Beom (I know I was). No man wants to imagine his woman fucking another man.

But she also didn't deserve to die for it.