Daisy by Andrew Lau Wai Keung (2006)
6 August 2006After all the bad reviews I was expecting that this film would be a disappointment, even though I am a huge Andrew Lau Wai Keung fan, and I will see anything that Jun Ji Hyun is in, and I am happy to say I was not disappointed at all, in fact I really enjoyed the film. Of course being a Lau Wai Keung film it looks gorgeous, as he is also a D.P. and shoots at least some of his own films, and this film looks great. The funny thing it is hard to classify because it actually looks like a Hong Kong film, but it seems like a Korean film, not just in the casting which is probably because Kwak Jae Young wrote it (who wrote and directed My Sassy Girl which made Jun Ji Hyun, as well Classic and Windstuck), and I have a feeling Korean’s don’t like the ending, and Hong Kongers don’t like the rest, I will explain that afterwards though. And besides how can I dislike any film with a cameo by the great David Chiang Dai Wai.
I watched the Korean Director’s cut DVD, which also includes the Korean theatrical version which I hear is different from the Hong Kong version (though I don’t know what they changed) and I recommend seeing it if you can (though it is Region 3, and has the weird Interlace issues I see pop up in many Korean DVD’s). This was a very enjoyable film.
REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS…
(Check out all you get with the Korean Director’s Cut Edition! And it has English Subs on the features, and it even comes with a film frame, too cool.)
The film is about a 25 year old girl names Hye Young (Jun Ji Hyun) who lives in the Netherlands with her eccentric grandfather, working in his antique shop and painting like a mad women to have enough paintings to fill her exhibit that is coming up. On weekends she goes to a square and works as a street painter, painting portraits for money.
One day a man Jeong Woo (Lee Sung Jae) shows up with a pot of Daisies in his hand and has her paint him, but he must run off, so he promises to come back the next day to let her finish the drawing, and he does, and keeps coming back, though he is usually distracted and looking off. Slowly they start spending more time together, and she tells him her story, how she used to go out to this field of daisies and cross a log across a stream and paint, because daisies to her are like sunflowers to Van Gogh. One day she is crossing and she falls into the water and everything is soaked and she lost ehr brushes, but when she returned a makeshift bridge had been built and her bad left on it, so she left a painting and thanked whoever did it, feeling it was done for her. And since then she has received daisies the whole time. Jeong Woo does not admit to being the guy, because he isn’t, but he doesn’t deny it either.
Then at the square his truth comes out, because it turns out he is a Interpol officer, and was staking out a Chinese drug syndicate on the street behind Hye Young, and he got the flowers just before seeing her at random, and when a shootout occurs, Jeong Woo saves a child, but is shot in the throat and loses her voice permanently. And she learns of Jeong Woo’s identity and that he has gone back to Korea, but she starts getting the daisies again, which she thinks are from him.
We find out otherwise. It turns out that the day after his first hit as an assassin, the killer Park Yi (Jung Woo Sung) ever smiling saw Hye Young out painting in the field in front of his hideout house. and he saw her fall in the river, saved her bag, and built the bridge for her, taking her painting. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, so he kept bringing her flowers to see her from afar and got an apartment above the square so he could watch her, and was crushed when he saw she had stopped waiting to meet him and was seeing Jeong Woo, and was going to give up when the gunfight happened and he shot to try and save Hye Young and Jeong Woo for her, though he does wound him to stop him from getting hit, which caused Hye Young to be hit instead.
With Jeong Woo out of the picture Park Yi slowly tries to move in, but without telling her who he is, and she is friends, but won’t let him close because she loves Jeong Woo, but only because she thinks he was the flower guy. Eventually Jeong Woo returns and apologizes for having used Hye Young and leaves, leaving her crushed, though he still loves her.
Jeong Woo’s boss Jang (Jeon Ho Jin) wants to capture an assassin, so they set up a hit on Jeong Woo to catch him, but at the place, Park Yi shows up and Jeong Woo leaves with him, knowing he is the assassin, but wanting to talk about Hye Young. Jeong Woo wants Park Yi to have her because he is really the one she loves, but Park Yi thinks the cop would be better, but then the cop turns up dead in the line of duty, and Hye Young is crushed.
A year later she is still hanging out with Park Yi all the time, and painting him paintings when she feels sorry for him, which is all the time, and he has filled his place with them, but when Detective Jang sees her at Jeong Woo’s grave and mentions that Jeong Woo knew the killer and listened to classical music, she suspects Park Yi and goes to his place and finds a gun and orders to kill Jang from his boss the Chinese Drug King Cho (David Chiang) and she wants to kill him, but passes out and he leaves.
When she wakes up she sees the painting and realizes that it is Park Yi she was waiting for her, and he explains in a letter saying he will never see her again because he was wrong for her, and he will always cherish their good times. She rushes to stop his assassination, and since Park Yi can read her lips, he does stop, but another assassin is there, who works for Cho and was at the first killing and who sniped Jeong Woo and he aims for Park Yi, but Hye Young jumps and takes the bullet and dies, because she loves him so much and she is crushed.
So Park Yi goes and takes revenge and takes out all of Cho’s men, and goes for Cho himself, though we don’t see what happened, because it does not matter because Park Yi killed the woman he loved because he got close to her, so his own death would have been a release.
And finally we see the beginning again in which Hye Young has to run under cover at the square to get out of the rain because she never carries an umbrella, and we see that Park Yi was there with the flowers he was going to deliver to her and Jeong Woo was there as well, having been there all the time.
I really enjoyed this film, and my only explanation why people did not like is that perhaps Korean audiences did not like the ending, and Hong Kong audiences didn’t go for love story which seemed very Korean to me, but that is only a guess. I can’t figure out why this film didn’t do well because I enjoyed it immensely. Sure it is very sad, and really drives home that as a bad person you should not love someone because you could bring them trouble and death, which Park Yi did to Hye Young who he loved, but his love was too strong to stay away, and he had never even met her.
I highly recommend this film.
You can purchase the Korean Region 3 Director’s Cut from Yes Asia here, or you can get the all region Hong Kong Version which has the Director’s Cut.
One Response to “Daisy by Andrew Lau Wai Keung (2006)”
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August 12th, 2006 at 8:14 am
Ummm I think i ‘ve missed good movie.
Thx for info …