The column this week comes with a statutory warning: Hong Ji-young’s New Year Blues is not a recommendation for the die-hard cinephiles. It is an effort to try and be in tune with the celebratory spirit of the moment, as 2025 makes way for 2026. So, if you are not partying, feeling lonely or gloomy, you could try a shot of New Year Blues with some hot chocolate for accompaniment, preferably with a helping of marshmallows.
In a landscape dominated by the US and UK, New Year Blues is one of the few contemporary international holiday flicks, including Farah Khan’s ho-hum Happy New Year. No wonder this South Korean film borrows heavily from the commonplace Hollywood rom-coms and then garnishes them with an obvious corny touch of the hugely popular K Dramas.
Set during seven snowy days from Christmas to New Year’s Eve, it’s about the ups and downs in the love life of four couples, who are linked to each other, in a roundabout way, through the common worlds they inhabit—snowboarding, tourism, a greenhouse and the civil service office.
Things are set in motion with Rae-hwan (Teo Yoo, of Past Lives fame), a physically challenged para snowboarding champion, proposing to the wind beneath his wings, his horticulturist girlfriend Oh-wol (Choo Soo-young). One of the Oh-wol’s workers, Yong-mi’s (Yeom Hye-ran, memorable for No Other Choice, When Life Gives You Tangerines) brother, a travel agent Yong-chan (Lee Dwong-hwi, Reply 1988 fame) is also all set to marry his Chinese girlfriend Yaolin (Chen Duling). Meanwhile, Rae-hwan’s rehab-trainer Hyo-young (Yoo In-na) is being stalked by her husband, even as divorce proceedings between the two are under way. She seeks restraining order and police protection and Kang Ji-hoo (Kim Kang-woo), of the homicide department, is given charge of the assignment, only to eventually fall for her hook line and sinker. Last of the four is the jilted in love Min Jin-ah (Lee Yeon-hee), a temporary worker at the rink, who decides to mend her heart by taking off for a solo vacation, arranged by Yong-chan’s travel agency, to a sunny Buenos Aires, where she meets a fellow South Korean, Lee Jae-heon (Yoo Yeon-seok, of popular series Hospital Playlist series) who works a wine delivery man after escaping burnout back home. Sparks fly expectedly after the initial misgivings and another possibility to find love opens for her.
Ji-young keeps the storytelling simple and doesn’t indulge in any stylistic or technical flourishes while moving between the intertwined affairs of the heart. The characters are flawed but innocently so and have a sense of decency and decorum. Things might go wrong for a while, but from the very start, the fact that eventually everything will turn out for the best for these young people, is a given. Simplistically so. It’s the complications in the middle, the situations imagined by the scriptwriters Ko Myung-joo and Ham Hyung-kyung and the emotions they imbue them with that propel the narrative and are all that eventually matter in reaching out, or not, to the audience. One person’s heartwarming and feel good could be fluff and cotton candy cinema for another after all.
There are the familiar elements of the typical K Drama romances; the coy kisses and distant gazes as well as centrality of food in the lives of characters—from the abundant, overflowing table of Yong-mi to the sandwiches on the go in Argentina. Of course, it helps that this multi-starrer has several who’s who of Korean entertainment business.
The story of Rae-hwan and Oh-wol is all about love itself coming in the way of love, how in trying to ensure comfort for the significant other you might end up losing your own sense of self and, in turn, her. It has a credible underlying social base—commercialization and exploitativeness in modern sports, gnawing, growing materialism and the prejudices against the physically challenged.
Similarly, the upcoming wedding of Yong-chan and Yaolin has a relatable impediment—the cultural and linguistic differences and how the forging of new ties can throw the existent ones in disarray, in this case about Yong-chan’s single sister, Yong-mi feeling insecure with the changing family dynamic.
While Hyo-young—Kang Ji-hoo relationship is all about abuse, the violence is left implicit in the face of Ji-hoo’s goofiness. And Jin-ah’s travels reminded me a lot of Kangana Ranaut’s solo honeymoon in Queen. All about finding yourself, by yourself, far away from home and your zone of comfort.
Over now to the wonderful films from the world over that await us in 2026. Have a Happy New Year at the movies.