#3670

Didn't we all come here to be happy?

3670 is a gem, from the careful character focus to the way the themes came together to create an intersectional portrait of self-discovery, alienation, community, and hope. The story centers around Cheol-jun (played brilliantly by newcomer Cho You-hyun), a North Korean defector who's still settling down in Seoul, working part-time and taking classes in preparation for applying to college. At the beginning of the film, he's trying to balance the two biggest aspects of his identity: his status as a defector, economically disadvantaged and dependent on charity from various organizations, and his desires as a gay man, a concept he couldn't even conceive of in the North, making him a late-bloomer when it comes to dating and romance. The combination is doubly alienating in a city like Seoul, where everyone walks around with headphones in and the air alternates between stifling and brittle.

You can practically see the demarcation between Cheol-ju's two identities from the start—he has a community of fellow defectors, but they don't know about this very crucial part of him, and they are all dealing with their own pain points, like the families they left behind in the North or the pressures of having to start life over from scratch. On the other hand, he doesn't know the first thing about navigating the gay scene in Seoul, until a hookup takes pity on him and invites him to a social gathering for gays in the Jongno-3ga neighborhood—kind of a group drinking party with icebreakers and light matchmaking endeavors. That doesn't go as planned, but the next day, an unexpected encounter with a guy named Yeong-jun at the convenience store where he works allows him to fall in with a group of same-aged friends (age is a huge deal when it comes to social relationships in Korea, so finding someone born in the same year as you can be an instant point of friendship), thus kickstarting his discovery of Seoul's gay scene and possibly his first brush with romance.

Park Sang-young, who was at the GV event that I went to on Wednesday (kind of an informal Q&A session with directors and actors after showings on opening week, to help drum up hype), is pretty much obsessed with the film. He said the casting somehow managed to reflect the actual gay scene he's familiar with, from body types to personalities, and the way they talk to and about each other. Yeong-jun, especially, feels deceptively boy-next-door at first, and it's not until later in the film that you realize how complex he actually is. It all felt very naturalistic in its character work—the relationships are so ordinary but every interaction reveals a deeper layer of detail—and also in the way the city was showcased, not postcard-perfect but wonderfully lived-in. I found myself mentally tracing Cheol-jun and Yeong-jun's steps from Mokdong, where they live, to the alleyway bars of Jongno-3ga, to the flashy Itaewon clubs, and back across the river to their sleepy neighborhood at the end of the night.

This film is quite openly leaning into the Love in the Big City hype, trying to capture that same audience (Park Sang-young's endorsement certainly helps), and I think the comparisons are warranted, in a good way. 3670 very much plays in the same sandbox, with the same toys, but the result takes a different shape. I appreciated the director not so much layering on social critiques as letting them seep in, like the way Cheol-ju's hookup app stays quiet until he adds "defector" to his bio, and then receives a flood of messages only interested in that one topic. The pressure-cooker education system is addressed, and the film also deals with religion in a nuanced way, as both Cheol-ju and Yeong-jun have complex relationships with the church. The defectors must rely on it as a source of not just scholarships but basic social support, while Yeong-jun has a more jaded outlook, having grown up with it his whole life.

I could probably go on for a few more paragraphs, but I do want to say that the director, Park Joon-ho, has a background in volunteering with North Korean refugees, and I believe he also made a short film centering the topic. I was impressed by the way he wove that aspect of Cheol-ju's identity into the story itself, not simply having it hover over everything like a heavy blanket.

Anyway, the production company produced a bunch of goods (photocards, posters, a keychain) that they're bundling up for select screenings, so guess who's seeing 3670 again on Monday... Even with the North Korean dialect and no subs I was surprisingly able to understand about 85% of the dialogue, so hopefully a second viewing will help bump that up even more lol.

Manifesting an international release for this plsplsplspls