South Korean independent film “The Love of Truman” is a piece of tedium about which I cannot care that much. At first, it begins with an interesting SF/fantasy story premise, but then it unfortunately drones on and on without much sense of wit or intelligence or imagination for more than 2 hours. My only consolation is that it gets a bit intriguing during its last act, but, folks, that was too late for my increasingly bored and drowsy mind during the viewing.

The movie opens with what can be regarded as a sort of Meet Cute moment between its two main characters. A guy named Hyeon-sik (Bae Yoo-ram) comes upon a seemingly unconscious young woman lying upon the floor of an empty subway station, and he is understandably perplexed at first. It soon turns out that this young lady, Ji-yeon (Lee Joo-woo), is just pretending to be unconscious, and, for no apparent reason, she attempts to befriend Hyeon-sik to his growing bafflement.

In the end, Hyeon-sik comes to listen to Ji-yeon’s unbelievable story. She works as a shorthand writer, and she happened to spot a really strange incident while she was working as usual on one day. Right after she heard something odd, all the people around her suddenly got paused in their motions and speeches, and this strange happening, which is incidentally called “Error” by Ji-hyeon, went on during next several minutes before everything went back to normal without being noticed by anyone except her.

Naturally, Hyeon-sik does not believe Ji-hyeon’s story at all, but, several months later, he happens to have an identical experience not long after encountering her again. In the end, he gets involved more with not only Ji-hyeon but also her current boyfriend Moon-seong (Kim Shin-bi), who has also had the same experiences just like her and Hyeon-sik. Together, these three people form a small group as “Trumans”, which is derived from Peter Weir’s classic film “The Truman Show” (1998). After all, as experiencing more of Errors, they often feel like not being in a real world, and they often wonder whether there is actually a way out for Trumans like them.

And it soon turns out to them that this may be possible. When they happen to attend one small meeting together, Ji-hyeon comes across a mysterious Japanese woman, and this lady, who seems to be a Truman and also knows much more than Ji-hyeon and her fellow Trumans, warns that a woman presiding over the meeting is actually very dangerous to Trumans. Before Ji-hyeon asks more, this Japanese woman quickly goes away, before telling a bit about the possible way out for Trumans in New Zealand.  

Now this looks like a nice setup for more interesting stuffs to come, but the screenplay by director/writer Kim Duk-joong, who previously directed “The Education” (2019) and “The Conversation” (2021), merely trudges and rambles instead to my disappointment. Ji-hyeon talks more and more about that possible way out in New Zealand with Moon-seong and Hyeon-sik, but Moon-seong becomes rather skeptical about that. This accordingly puts some strain on his relationships with both Hyeon-sik and Ji-hyeon, who comes to love and care about both Hyeon-sik and Moon-seong.

The movie spends a considerable amount of running time on the triangle among its three main characters, but it sadly fails to flesh them out as well as their relationships more. Despite the earnest efforts from the three main cast members in the film, their characters feel quite flat and mediocre without much sense of life and personality, and this only made me appreciate more of the greatness of François Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim” (1962), which has a much more fascinating and engaging triangle at the center of its story. Consequently, we become less and less interested in their triangle as it goes nowhere – before being eventually fizzled out around the beginning of the last act.

Around the last act, things do get a little more interesting as I already told you above. One of the three main characters becomes obsessed with finding that supposedly dangerous woman, and he soon comes to have a little private conversation with her, but, again, the story remains vague and murky about whatever is actually happening between them. Although we subsequently get more conversations besides this conversation scene, the movie remains aimless and confounding without much sense of plot progress, and it feels all the hollower with its abruptly anti-climactic ending.

While quite bored and frustrated throughout its rather running time (146 minutes), my mind somehow noticed a few saving graces to remember. There are several competent sequences including the one where Hyeon-sik and Ji-yeon explore a dark underground tunnel after being locked inside a subway station, and I also enjoyed a good supporting performance from Kang Jin-ah, who has some fun with her potential femme fatale character’s adamantly elusive aspects.  

In conclusion, “The Love of Truman” is too tedious and superficial for me to care about in terms of story and character. As my mind kept wandering from the movie itself, I was reminded of a number of small SF/fantasy independent films a lot more entertaining than this, and I particularly want to recommend 2020 Japanese film “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes”, which happened to be released in South Korean theaters a few weeks ago. Although it is quite shorter than “The Love of Truman”, this little but likable Japanese genre film has more wit, intelligence, and imagination in my inconsequential opinion, and I assure you that you will have a lot more productive time if you watch it instead.