Boy Meets Boy (2008)

This movie is 10 minutes of sweetness. I stumbled upon it while searching for something new to watch, and I was happily surprised. For being a movie where the actors don't say a word, I understood everything completely. The looks, the small movements and the light explains everything and I recall myself just sitting there squeaking. It is an incredible cute story and the actors are doing great. I have already watched it several times.

The only thing I dislike with this movie is the 3 minutes long song in the middle. It is dull, annoying and does not have anything to do with the story. Otherwise the soundtrack is as sweet as the story itself.

I highly recommend you watching this and I would, at the same time, like to mention that the director of "Boy meets boy" has made a 30 minutes long movie in the same spirit, "Just friends?". A movie just as delightful as this one.

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This film was really cute and not what I expected. I was wary because it was a short film, but once I got through a fourth of the short film, I couldn't stop watching. The actors don't say a single word, but their feelings can be easily seen. Their body language and facial expressions are open books to the plot. The plot twist really surprised me and made me really like the film.

Also, the only words really spoken are in a musical number. It may seem cheesy, out of place, and funny, but the lyrics have a really good lesson. It doesn't hurt that you want to clap or attempt to sing to it.

If you want a sweet taste of Korean LGBT films, I highly recommend this tidbit.

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Feels icky

I know this is supposed to be cute and endearing but one looks like a middle school student and the other an adult man in his twenties. Feels icky honestly. The movie shows them in the same school so they're supposed to be only a few years apart so maybe cast actors who look similar in age? The music video in the middle is completely unnecessary. It breaks the flow of the movie even if it raises valid concerns about meeting strangers - but in the end they're actually schoolmates, so what's the relevance? There is no dialogue but I feel some of the expressions are exaggerated in overcompensation.

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First step in a career in favor of LGBT people

'Boy Meets Boy' is a South Korean short film of romantic, musical, youth and LGBT+ themes, premiered at the 13th Pusan ​​International Film Festival in 2008, and since then it has given a lot to talk about for several reasons: it was the first film work by Kim Jho Kwang-soo, the first collaboration between this filmmaker and the screenwriter Min Yong Keun, and presented for the first time Min Soo and Seok Yi, two characters that he would return to the following year to form the wedding couple of the short 'Just Friend?', also following up Min Soo in Love 100°, another short of his authorship, from 2010.
Since then, the South Korean filmmaker showed signs of taking his time to weave the story with the thoroughness that has always characterized him, working like a craftsman in his eagerness to recreate every detail.
The director of 'The New Employee: The Movie' (2023) has spent almost two decades building an authorial block of unusual quality in the history of South Korean cinema, full of triumphs and very few mistakes. Throughout his work he has not only made important films, series and short films, but through them he has known how to rewrite the history of his country anchored to its most recurrent film themes and objectives: such as sexual awakening, most of age, sexuality, gender identity, being queer in a heteronormative and discriminatory society towards LGBT+ people and activism in favor of the rights of this group to which he himself has acknowledged belonging since 2006.
To film the short, he based it on Min Yong Keun's script of the same name about a love crush, in a festive and magical way. The film, without spoken dialogue, describes the relationship between Min Soo (Kim Hye Sung), a boy who loves photography and is gay, and Seok-Yi (Lee Hyun-jin), who seems a little tough but still manages groom to show your soft side. It also tells us about the indecision when it comes to expressing feelings and the need to be brave and go in search of love when it has arrived at your door.
Despite its short duration and the incorporation of music, dance and a magical fantasy, the viewer manages to maintain the common thread of the story in that elegant background of love at first sight.
At one point in the film, Kim Jho Kwang-soo, wang-soo, who collaborated with director Lee Song Hee Il to produce 2006's 'No Regret,' considered "the first real Korean gay film," and has shot others gay-themed works such as 'Two Weddings and a Funeral' (2012), 'One Night Only' (2014) or 'Made on the Rooftop', and the BL series 'The New Employee', introduces a fantastic character in the form of a fairy which comes to represent Min Soo's thoughts as someone who falls in love for the first time.
Despite not having dialogues, the filmmaker manages to make the audience identify with his characters, in addition to clearly establishing the relationships between them, through looks, gestures, expressions, body language and useful inclusion of the fairy (Yeh Ji-won).
The fairy symbolically represents the thoughts and feelings of the boy who has just discovered love for the first time in his short life: the nascent passion, the sexual awakening, the discovery, the acceptance, the insecurities, the fears, the worries, the fears, excitement, enthusiasm, innocence, naivety, and expectation, all in a mixture that explodes in unison.
With a palette of bright, festive colors, and corny and strident music to identify the fairy, but restrained and romantic to enhance the mood of the characters and set the tone of the film, the director guides us towards the discovery of love and sexuality in a new and unique experience for the character.
Of an autobiographical nature, the director himself stated that he based the story told in 'Boy Meets Boy' on his first love experience.
I liked the chemistry of the two protagonists, palpable from their first meeting on the bus. They are both adorably acting actors whose performances are enough to recommend watching the film.
Also highlight the use of Min Su's film reel as a symbol of love and life, by first representing the union of the two protagonist boys, and then serving as an invisible and conductive thread that, in constant movement, like life itself, unites all the characters.

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Double POV for a love story

I am still trying to figure out what have I just watched: a short bl movie or a governement sponsored film about dangers of hook ups(song with animation!)....An experimental movie? A student assignment?

There are two parts in this movie, each telling the story of how they met from different points of view. The parts a separated by a weird song sung by a brilliant actress in a bizarre role of Cupid(?!?). Other than that, the movie has no dialogue and everything is told through gestures and looks. Sometimes less is more, as they say!

One guy is a shy photographer, the other bullies him and then falls for him. The actors played their roles well: we could see every though that was going through their minds: the reluctance to approach, the courage to apologize, the audacity to confess.

I saw a very bad quality copy on youtube but the production value does not seem very high, editing is a bit choppy and there was no need for this weird Cupid: the story was perfectly fine without that singing/animated interlude. The music was awful: it sounded like elevator/porn music: one short theme repeated over and over again with slight changes and synthesizer rhythm section. Very distracting! The movie is actually 11min long, the rest are credits!

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Cute Short

This is a very sweet short film about love at first sight. The actors are very cute and there's no dialogue so the story is told just with their expressions. I'd say the only thing that ruins the rhythm of the film is the totally unnecessary song thrown into the middle of the story with a supposed cupid weaving her magic, its pretty tragic and dates this short which isn't good.

That the two are gay is more suggested as I imagine in 2008 Korean gay films were few and far between. It would have been interesting to have seen this story expanded upon so that we could see the backstory of the two leads. One a member of a group of bullies , the other a love of photography. They introduced them but never fully utilized their potential.

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Um….what?

It’s cute until he gets off the bus. It could have (and should have) ended there.

Three minutes of the limited time is devoted to a psychedelic trip-like PSA from Cupid with all the terrible effects you’d expect from the mid nineties.

Cute tiny kid falls for big kid who roughed him up with his friends and presumably mugged him. Cute tiny kid even recognizes him eventually, dude who didn’t help him. and it ends with him hugging this guy without ever speaking to him. Just…what?

The synopsis is much more adorable than the short. save your thirteen minutes.

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