Heartwarming, funny, bittersweet and unforgettable, 'My Friend Is Still Alive' (내 친구는 아직 살아있다 / Nae Chinguneun Ajik Sal-aissda), 2013 KBS drama special, revolves around high school students Chi Hyun (Lee Joo Seung, from 9 Seconds - Eternal Time) and Myung Soo (Kim Chang Hwan), who always take care of their best friend Kyung Sook (Lee Gi Kwang, from Me Too, Flower), who has been fighting leukemia for years.
To accompany him in his most difficult moments, they shave their heads as a sign of affection and affection, take him to the beach, tell him jokes and make fun of him, always with the aim of making him smile.
Instead of talking about how sad the situation is, the three prefer to clown around and talk about their non-existent love lives and make plans for the future.
The doctor will tell Kyung Sook one day that he is improving and the next he describes a discouraging and Dantesque panorama. Faced with uncertainty, Kyung Sook decides to make a list of last wishes that he wants to fulfill if he has to die young. His last wish is to kiss his first love before he dies, but he has never experienced falling in love.
So, Chi Hyun and Myung Soo set out on a mission to find a girl who can become the dying friend's first love with very funny results.
If you are new to K-dramas you should know that "first loves" are essentially the ones that matter the most, as they will be remembered for a lifetime.
In the process, they meet Kook Hwa (Jeon Soo Jin - "kook"), and manage to convince her that Kyung Sook is in love with her. This is how the two young people connect. The three boys decide to hide the truth from Kook Hwa about Kyung Sook's illness, despite recognizing that it is not fair to her. But when the sick person's health deteriorates, the time comes when it will be difficult for them to maintain the lie.
What will happen? Will Kyung Sook be able to give the long-awaited first kiss before he dies? That question is answered in one of the most beautiful and moving scenes in all the romantic comedies in history.
But before you get there, your heart will skip a beat when you hear the dying man tell his friend Chi Hyun one of the most beautiful lines in all the romantic comedies of all time: "The things I wanted to do with my first love, Come to think of it, I did them with you. We rode our bikes together. We fed each other. We watched the stars together. We spent the night together. I've done all those things for the first time with you. Every one of them. It's not I may like a man, but when I think about it, my first love was you. I did a lot of things with you, friend. So I may not have my first kiss, but at least I have a first love before I die."
Directed by Lee Eung Bok and scripted by Go Jung Won, 'My Friend Is Still Alive' brings a rollercoaster of emotions, showing a wonderful and touching story of friends and love.
With male bonding as its main theme, actors Lee Gi Kwang and Lee Joo Seung deliver dynamic and surprisingly realistic performances. Shocking to see how the friendship and love between these friends developed in a really nice balance, and how they redefined first love.
Yes, it is a BL romantic comedy or love between boys, although it does not follow the same channels that the genre has accustomed us to. But more than highlighting the issue, what interests me most here is appreciating the film as an unsurpassed exponent of comedy as a model of what is inherent to the comic event on screen, of the relationship between hilarity and reflection, of the timing and tone of comedy.
Lee Eung Bok starts from the fundamental pillar of comedy: a generic device mounted on the careful premise of provoking laughter in a situation that is supposedly antithetical to the genre (illness, death, pain), a neat and well-crafted script; asset accompanied in his film by attributes such as class, containment in the underlining, a narrative fluidity that juxtaposes, with high craftsmanship in the assembly, each of the scenarios of expression of the situations of hilarity.
The director of 'School', 'Dream High' and 'Descendants of the Sun', among other dramas and films, learned in 'My Friend Is Still Alive' the lesson given by the genre in its classic aspect: defined characters; comic effectiveness; place for the farcical-irrational; dialogues elaborated on the reel of a spiral of stinging retorts; direct planning; simple narrative structure, but full of spark and mischief; maintained pulse and constant rhythm; actors who exude poise in superb compositions whose effectiveness is supported by intelligent editing, always concerned with cutting in time before killing the gag.