Mayfly Love

The premise behind the romantic supernatural Korean film The Beauty Inside is really provocative: what if you fell in love with a man whose body changes into that of a different person every day?

Woo-jin (played by 30+ actors) is a custom furniture designer with a very odd condition: he transforms completely every time he goes to sleep. After he wakes up in the morning he changes into a different body that can be of any age, appearance, race, gender or nationality. It's completely random, and he can't control this change at all. When he becomes a new person his eyesight, body size and language can alter as well. Switching nationalities, for example, leaves him able to understand Korean but only speak in his new body's native language (which he doesn't understand.)

Despite his complicated life Woo-jin manages to get along okay. He works alone, does everything via the internet, and has the support of his childhood best friend and business partner. He even dates, although every girl he sees is destined to be only a one-night stand. Then he meets and falls for Yi-soo (Han Hyo-joo), a furniture store sales woman. He stays awake for two days to have a chance to romance her while in his current tall, handsome male body (played wonderfully by Park Seo-joon.) Of course he can't stay awake forever, so just as things get interesting with Yi-soo Woo-jin falls asleep on the subway, and wakes up as a different person.

Woo-jin can't give up on Yi-soo, and approaches her again, this time in the body of a pretty young woman. He manages to convince her of his condition, and Yi-soo agrees to date him. Their relationship grows from there, and every time they meet Yi-soo never knows who Woo-jin is until he holds her hand and tells her. They seem to have fun with it, too, but gradually the stress starts to get to Yi-soo and affect her job, and she has to go on medication to cope. I don't want to spoil the whole film, so I'll end the description there.

This was a marvelous story, and whoever did the casting for the many faces of Woo-jin gets a gold star from me. There were a lot of very famous actors in this film playing the role of Woo-jin, including Lee Dong-wook, Lee Beom-soo, Go Ah-sung, Park Shin-hye, Seo Kang-joon, and Yoo Yeon-seok to name a few. Despite the fact that most only got cameo-length performances they all did a great job in keeping Woo-jin's character cohesive no matter who was playing him. I did think Park Seo-joon did the best job with the character portrayal, but I'm rather biased there.

There are no special effects in this film, and the supernatural aspects are kept wisely to a minimum. There is a bit of an explanation for Woo-jin's condition toward the end of the movie, but the emphasis was more on what it's like to live this kind of mayfly life and try to have a loving relationship. How Woo-jin manages things like ID cards and passports when he never has the same face is not explained, either, but I was willing to believe he'd find a way. Available to watch on Viki.com for free with lots of commercials.