‘Beautiful Dreamer’ review: Sensitive South Korean drama explores the impact of suicide

Dir/scr: Lee Kwang-kuk. South Korea. 2025. 109mins

In Beautiful Dreamer, a woman decides to finally scatter her husband’s ashes and put his memory to rest years after he took his own life, to the objection of her university student daughter who is not ready to say a final good-bye to her father. Mother and daughter clash, delicately, while wrestling with their feelings of shame and sorrow. Writer/director Lee Kwang-kuk is accomplished at handling emotional fallout and, while he does not have much new to say about grief, guilt, blame and the stigma of suicide, he has nevertheless crafted a sensitive exploration of these themes.

Blurs the lines between past and present, imagination and reality

This Busan premiere is the fifth feature from Lee, a former assistant director for Hong Sang-soo. Lee’s previous film, A Wing And A Prayer (2022) – a coming-of-age story set against Korea’s economic turbulence which also bowed at Busan – moved away from the whimsy of his earlier work, and he follows that trend here. With no hint of a distracting score, and dispensing with the formal embellishments of his past films, Lee keeps the lens trained squarely on the women at the centre of the story to create a grounded, realistic work. It could well bring the director his broadest exposure to date.

Lee’s exploration of lingering pain and letting go in the wake of unexpected tragedy begins in Seoul, where university student Su-yeon (Hong Seung-hee, The Moon) is dodging her landlord – who also appears to be her only friend – and mostly keeping to her sombre self. Across the country in the eastern coastal city of Dongbae, her mother In-seon (Lee Ji-hyun) is similarly isolated, running a guest house and attending grief counselling sessions with Jong-soon (Lee Ju-won), with whom she has become close. 

Both Su-yeon and In-seon are mourning the death by suicide of their father and husband Ji-ho (Kwan Hyuk) three years earlier. The anniversary of his death is approaching, and In-seon wants some kind of closure and to put the past behind her. As if putting an exclamation point on the issue, she’s also trying to sell the family home. Su-yeon, meanwhile, refuses to even consider her mother’s wishes or her own mental wellbeing. Increasingly isolated, she insists it’s too soon to just get on with her life.

Beautiful Dreamer’s lack of Korean specificity emphasises the universality of the mixed emotions that arise when someone close to us takes their own life. Su-yeon and In-seon remain trapped in confusion, resentment and rage, and have their feelings thrown into even greater turmoil when Ji-ho’s oldest friend Sang-woo (Shin Ah-jin) drunkenly suggests his death was partially In-seon’s fault. Is that fair? Not by a long shot, but it shakes In-seon precisely because it touches on her biggest fear. It’s a quiet moment that both Shin and Lee play perfectly, lacing their performances with equal parts humiliation and terror.

Lee blurs the lines between past and present, imagination and reality, as In-seon and Su-yeon remember Ji-ho in their own ways, but tones down any surrealism or irreverence. Cinematographer Kim Hyung-koo’s (Memories of Murder) unfettered compositions let the world move on around In-Seon and Su-yeon, making it seem as if they are running in place – an impression underscored by awkward interactions with shopkeepers, old friends, and relatives trying to disinvite them to family functions for fear of bad karma. 

This is the type of intimate, internalized film that can only be as affecting as its leads. For the vast majority of the running time, television veteran Lee Ji-hyun proves up to the task, only occasionally falling into recognizable small-screen mannerisms. She is matched scene-for-scene by Hong, who keeps Su-yeon from teetering into the abyss of selfish brat. When mother and daughter finally have an overdue, if stilted, but ultimately hopeful conversation, it is as close as director Lee comes to making a grand statement about a social issue. As a whole, Beautiful Dreamer signals a welcome evolution in his filmmaking.