Tell me if you wouldn’t find this disturbing: imagine you’re going through a “new romance” buzz; you start showing each other the things you appreciate hoping your new flame will love them as you do. You stop in a used record store and each promise to pick out one group/album/song that is -far as you can tell- only appreciated by you. You duck back ten minutes later and … you BOTH have chosen the same exact album! In the moment, such is undeniably cute; in reality? Disturbing. The odds are just too great at that point that you share the same gene pool, knowhatI’m sayin’?
Maybe I’m exaggerating. But I swear I’d be more creeped than excited if this were my fate. The music store patrons in today’s film are both musicians, which makes this moment doubly creepy in my mind. I mean, if neither knows jack about music and they both show up with, I dunno, “Abbey Road,” yeah, I get that. However. In this case you both have been exposed to a ton of music and arrived at exactly the same conclusion. It’s like two avid hikers coinciding their favorite tree on the 2,190 miles of the Appalachian Trail.
All of that is irrelevant. The story here today is about Yoo-Joon (KPOP star Do Kyung-soo, a.k.a. “D.O.”), an ex-concert pianist whose career fizzled out in Poland. But he’s drawn to the music still … specifically a tune coming from one of the music rooms on his college campus, where Jung-a (Won Jin-ah) is playing the m
ysterious tune, “Dogwhistle.” Yoo-Joon has love at first hear (?) I dunno, what’s the hearing equivalent of “sight?”
But isn’t this music hall destined for destruction? Like tonight? (Who bulldozes at night? Is this a Korean thing?) Ah, I see, this is a “What’s going on here?” film, which is cool. Cooler still is dad of Yoo-Joon; I wish I could find more information on this film, cuz the dad-son rapport here is my favorite parent/child relationship of film in 2023.
What’s important in Secret: Untold Melody is not romance, but that Yoo-Joon gets his groove back; that he figures out once again how to share his musical gift with the world, and it’s gonna start at the battle of the bands. And by “battle of the bands,” I mean battle of the pianos, and by “battle,” I mean duel -cuz that’s all who showed up, apparently. I’m not sure any of this film translates correctly, and I’m not sure the reality of Jung-a will make the viewer anything other than confused, but I think we all can agree it’s weird these two -in a fit of passionate romance- picked out the same crappy song to play for one another. Decent watch, but I’m not going out on a limb for this one.
There once was a pianist Yoo-Joon
Whose career ended entirely too soon
Yet a mysterious lady
Under circumstances, shady
Got him to remember his life’s missing tune
Not Rated, 104 Minutes
Director: You-min Seo
Writer: Won Jin-ah, Do Kyung-soo
Genre: How Yoo-Joon got his groove back
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Hopeless romantics
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who think all piano duets should be “Heart & Soul”
