La Plus Belle Semaine de Ma Vie (The Loveliest Week of my Life, aka: My Lovely Week or All for Love) is not the first Corean film I've seen that takes the central conceit behind British romantic comedy Love Actually and runs with it. The latter must have been a rather prominent success, either with Corean audiences or filmmakers, because every couple years, it seems like another film about multiple relationships with somewhat interconnected stories appears on the Corean film scene. Fortunately, this one doesn't do too bad a job with the conceit.
Each of the stories presented focuses on different aspects of relationships: a rather strict divorced executive's relationship (or lack thereof) with his friends and family including his young son, an old landlord's relationship with his widowed friend/tenant, financially burdened newlyweds, a divorced headstrong neurologist and a stubborn somewhat curmudgeon cop's antagonism, a somewhat crazy nun-in-training struggling between her calling and her pop-star crush, and a former professional basketball player with a young "make-a-wish"-type cancer patient. That said, although the film does shift a lot between the parties, the dramatic weight of the film does seem to fall into the romantic comedy of the neurosurgeon/cop and the melodrama of the has-been and the kid.
The hardest part about the film is that it really does go for breadth rather than depth, making its strength, the exploration of the contexts of love in different circumstances, also its weakness. Some of the stories seem almost inconsequential and sometimes characters seem to undergo changes without believable causes. Also, the connections at times seem a little contrived (the pop star, in particular), but not so much as to take you out of the picture. Just harder to swallow in retrospect. At the same time, several of the stories are certainly entertaining, including the developing love hate relationship between doctor/cop and the same love-hate between has-been/kid. Still, you can't help but feel that the film is a little slight as a result of twisting all these stories together.
Still, the production is pretty good, the acting is generally solid and the overall direction is good. It's only that the stories are fairly uneven in quality and suffer occasionally from a lack of focus. All in all, I'd have to say that The Loveliest Week of My Life was pretty decent for its entertainment value. You can't go into it looking for depth, but it does consistently hit more than miss when it comes to the genre elements of romance, comedy, drama and melodrama. It does get a little crazy and even unbelievable at times and sometimes it's hard to understand just why people are doing what they're doing, but its charms outweigh its flaws for the most part. If you loved Love Actually and want more of its approach to storytelling, you'll probably find something to like in this film. 7/10.
