Danusha_Goska Save Send Delete "Never Forever" is a deeply flawed movie replete with missed opportunities that whiz right past like rush hour buses in front of a motionless commuter. It is also well worth seeing, for a riveting performance by Vera Farmiga, a suggestive plot, and its treatment of unusual topics.Sophie (Vera Farmiga), a beautiful, blonde, trophy wife, is determined to give Andrew (David McGinnis) her "master-of-the-universe," very wealthy and successful husband, the child he cannot father himself. He is infertile. Her husband is Korean, so she chases down Jihah, (Jung-Woo Ha) an illegal Korean immigrant, and offers him three hundred dollars for every time he has sex with her, and thirty thousand dollars once she gets pregnant. The two perform the act with complete alienation, but eventually develop feelings for each other. The plot, is, of course, implausible. It reaches its height of silliness when Sophie tells Jihah she will pay him the bonus of $30,000 if she gets pregnant. Why the bonus? Would he really not have sex with this beautiful woman for three hundred dollars if he did not get the bonus? Are there other beautiful women out there offering bonuses of $25,000, and does Sophie need to remain competitive? Further, Sophie reveals no knowledge that a woman is fertile for a short window every month. Is she having sex with Jihah outside of that window of opportunity? Apparently so, because no seasons pass; all the action seems to take place during the same month. Finally, why not just go to a sperm bank, or use a turkey baster? Indeed, why does Sophie remove every stitch of clothing? You really don't need to remove everything you've got on in order to perform the act necessary for pregnancy. The film's marketers show a healthy respect for the market appeal of nude Vera Farmiga.Most of the action takes place in Sophie and Andrew's rich, cold, white, empty house and Jihah's squalid, lurid, red-and-green walled tenement. The director did not create enough atmosphere with these two sets. I never get a sense of Jihah's room. In one scene, it rains. That scene should have been milked for all it was worth: two strangers, separated by race and class, united for a moment, in a tiny apartment, as rain falls outside. Sigh.Also, so much more could have been done with the sex scenes, which are rather flat and unimaginative. Sophie and Jihah connect, and transcend barriers of race and class, through this one act. I wish that they had been depicted with more eloquence.In spite of the criticisms, this movie is well worth seeing. It isn't prurient. It's really a fairy tale about connection in spite of distance. Like a fairy tale, the film suggests and evokes more than it depicts, and the viewer's imagination is left to fill in the blanks. "Never Forever" is also worth seeing because it is unusual. This is the only American film with a Korean-born Korean lead with a thick Korean accent that many viewers may ever see. Finally, the film is worth seeing for Vera Farmiga's riveting performance. She conveys volumes with a glance. Sophie is not very bright, and has limited strength. She sits around her gilded cage all day, while her maid cleans her house and her husband works. She's, simply, not very likable, but Farmiga makes Sophie very watchable. Jung-Woo Ha as Jihah is also fascinating. He's not particularly good looking. He makes for a convincing illegal immigrant. He is short, slight, and wears stained t-shirts. As the film draws closer to him and spends more time with him, though, the viewer can see what is special about him, and comes to care about him – this process parallels the experience of falling in love. At first the other may come across as not that special, but as two people get closer together, they see what is special about the other.

jcnsoflorida I wantcha to know I have limited my mini-reviews to Netflix but I'm making an exception for this because I want non-Netflix people to see it too. Never Forever is a conundrum. On the one hand, really melodramatic, improbable and predictable at the same time. And yet it manifests --I would even say embodies-- a sort of filmic courage that is rare indeed.The sheer loonyness of it all somehow seems to contribute to its real strength. Perhaps it is art defying rationality. Parse it, and it more or less falls apart. But if you let it hit you, you're likely to find it memorable. The confident tone suggests to me that director Gina Kim is on the road to formidable.

kk2060 I am Korean working as a writer/director in America. The director studied in the same film school but I never met her. That was the only interest in this film.I always didn't liked Vera Farmiga. I thought that her acting is awful since she feels so much about her look when she is acting. I never saw her getting into her character truly.But in this film she was pretty good. At the beginning,she was not so good as usual. But as time goes by, I felt that she is feeling what her character needs and wants.I still don't think that it's her hidden ability that made this possible but rather her effort working with the director.Above all, I was very impressed about the film. There are a lot of layers in the story, each characters' emotion and of course the light and shadow in the mis-en-scene.It's a wonderful art movie.

thebanquet Never Forever is a rare gem in the film industry, an art-house film enjoyable to watch on a Friday night. Though I think English native speakers might have a bit of a problem with the male lead Ha Jung Woo's English speaking ability, otherwise it's perfect. Sophie Lee(Vera Farmiga in a superb performance)is a white girl from a plain American family who marries Andrew(David McInnis),a successful Korean American lawyer from a high class family. The couple have a perfect life except for one thing. Andrew's sperms aren't strong enough for Sophie to have a baby. This one factor leads Andrew to attempt suicide.Next we see Ji Ha. Ji Ha is an illegal immigrant who is saving money so that he can bring his girlfriend to America, but because he's living illegally, there are many things he can't do like selling his sperms to a clinic for a small amount of money. After being rejected by the clinic, he comes home depressed to find a strange white woman sitting in front of his doorstep with a dangerous proposal. Every time he has sex with her she'll give him 300dollars and if she gets pregnant he gets thirty thousand dollars in cash.That white woman is Sophie. Seeing as getting pregnant was the only choice to make her husband happy, she buys Ji-Ha's sperms after seeing him by chance at the clinic. What started as a strict business relationship starts turning into passionate love.I will stop here about the plot because if I write more,it'll probably become a spoiler but the main reason I liked this movie wasn't the plot. It was the superb performances of Vera Farmiga and Ha Jung Woo(a relatively unknown in the international movie industry, having bit parts in acclaimed director Kim Ki Duk's film 'Time'and 'Breath'.)I've only seen Vera Farmiga in 'The Departed' and 'Running Scared',yet the depth she put into Sophie was something I rarely see an actor or actress perform. Not to mention full frontal nudity. Not many actresses like to take their clothes off even if it's necessary and if they do, they ask for tons of money but Vera willingly did it in a three million dollar low-budget film. Ha Jung Woo is, how can I say it, a phenomenon. I knew he was good looking after seeing him in 'The Fox Family'(not many actors look good when they're dressed like a total nitwit.)but didn't know the extent of his acting abilities. His English tongue is not perfect,sure,but how many actors can act so well speaking a language that they're not completely fluent in? I cried my eyes out during one scene where he whispers into Vera's ear "Saranghaeyo"(in English it means "I love you"), the only Korean line he speaks .Overall, Never Forever is a fantastic film. Go check it out when it opens(if it opens)in a theater near you.(It's also worth knowing that the theme for the movie was composed by Michael Nyman, the man behind the music for The Piano,directed by Jane Campion.)