The Essence Of Existence In My Love, Don’t Cross That River

By Roger Costa

A Blockbuster in Korea, this unforgettable documentary accompanies the mutual respect, sacrifices and pure love of a couple known as “the 100-year lovers”.

Moyoung Jin’s delicate and touching testimony follows Jo Byeong-man and Kang Kye-yeol as they enjoy their daily lives, by themselves, in a small quiet village surrounded by a peaceful landscape of mountains and rivers. They examine each other with passionate eyes, as they work together around the house, play as if they were children, exchange declarations of eternal love and deeply discuss the facts of aging process, their increasing weakness and inevitable destiny.

During a family reunion, their children and grandchildren reveal details of their exemplar relationship, enduring years, facing wars, spanning generations and tragedies along the day, persisting and maintaining firmly the vows of their sacred union. As members of the family testifies the appreciation for providing them lessons of life, the director makes a delicate, purely humane and honest account on the essence of existence: loving and caring for one other, in harmony with the Creator, Nature and with living souls.

They carry so much joy for life, for each other, that watching them walking around holding hands so close to each other, wearing matching traditional outfits, invites the audience for a meditation on the assurance of the most precious gift given by the Creator, the opportunity of experiencing the real meaning of love. They also testify nostalgic stories of childhood and when they first met, as well as the sacrifices and tragedies that had shaken them along the way, the loss of 6 children, stories of war, and unsettled family matters.

As time won’t stop, and life must continue its wonderfully mysterious cycle, the husband falls gravely ill, and sometimes is difficult to watch his suffering on screen, although by then, the audience had already embraced him, and the wife, as members of the same universal family. They start a mourning preparation, a painful process, as he tries to settle his final duties, revealing a powerful strength of accepting life and death just as they are.

“My Love, Don’t Cross That River” is a miracle of a film that will make you re-evaluate the conception of how we spend our times as travelers, and partners in the world, providing a heartbreaking real love-story about embracing life, its pleasures and complications.

A Film Movement Release. Opens Friday, June 17^th at Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, NYC, followed by other cities.