By: Hafiz Jasri
A clerical error in heaven causes a high-powered lawyer to learn the error of her selfish ways. Yes, I just gave away the entire plot of Kang Hyo-jin’s fanciful comedy “Wonderful Nightmare” in that first sentence. But that’s only a spoiler if you’ve never seen a movie before.
“Wonderful Nightmare” is built upon the celestial body-swap story template exemplified by the classic Hollywood film “Here Comes Mr. Jordan,” as well as its remake “Heaven Can Wait.” It’s also a comedy that shifts into a shamelessly tear-jerking final act, a particular Korean movie specialty. All of which is to say that originality is not its strong suit. But just like the simple Korean meals longed for by the husband in this story, the fact that you’ve had this particular kind of dish many times before makes it no less satisfying. Despite its occasional tonal miscalculations, and the nakedly emotional manipulation of its later passages, “Wonderful Nightmare” mixes its easily identifiable ingredients into a pretty tasty cinematic meal.
The prologue swiftly sets up the reasons the ambitious attorney Yeon-woo (Uhm Jung-hwa) is the way she is, and basically it comes down to being orphaned as a child. Her sailor father perished at sea, and her mother followed soon after in grief. All this made her grow up believing she could rely on no one but herself. Decades later, she’s a proud, materialistic Single Lady who has clawed her way up to become a take-no-prisoners lawyer, with nary a consideration for her clients’ moral and ethical crimes. Even though she’s a staunchly independent woman, she’s hardly an advocate of sisterhood, as evidenced by the fact that we first see her defending a teenager facing trial for attempted rape. She gets the young woman and her mother on the other side to settle, since the much richer young man has the resources to fight the case, while the young woman will eventually have her identity exposed and her reputation ruined.
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