Be With You

Watch for

• In Be With You, what the characters postpone saying gives grief softened by a rainy-season miracle that gives a widower, his son and the woman they lost one impossible second chance its weight, so pauses and ordinary objects can matter more than declarations.
• Read Be With You's routines—waiting, eating, traveling, working and returning to familiar places—through grief softened by a rainy-season miracle that gives a widower, his son and the woman they lost one impossible second chance; repetition carries emotional history.

Production notes

Be With You was directed by Lee Jang-hoon and released in 2018. KOFIC describes the film as a 132-minute romance released March 14, 2018 and directed by Lee Jang-hoon. So Ji-sub and Son Ye-jin star, with Kim Ji-hwan playing their young son. The film adapts Takuji Ichikawa’s Japanese novel, which had previously inspired a Japanese screen version.

Trivia

• The Korean release drew about 2.6 million admissions.
• The official Korean film database credits Lee Jang-hoon as director of Be With You, with a listed running time of 132 min.
• KOFIC identifies the film as Lee Jang-hoon’s feature directing debut, starring So Ji-sub and Son Ye-jin.
• The story adapts Ichikawa Takuji’s Japanese novel about a deceased mother who returns during the rainy season with no memory of her family.
• KOFIC records more than 2.6 million admissions for the 2018 release.

Legacy

What keeps Be With You distinctive is the way it turns grief softened by a rainy-season miracle that gives a widower, his son and the woman they lost one impossible second chance into dramatic action rather than background explanation. Its legacy is best framed through how the film combines family melodrama with a fantasy premise in a star vehicle.