Antique Bakery

Antique Bakery (Korean, 2008)
Directed by Min Gyu Dong
Starring Joo Ji Hun, Kim Jae Wok, Yoo Ah In, Choi Ji Ho and Andy Gillet
Adapted from a Japanese Manga by Fumi Yoshinaga

Without any expectation, watching Antique Bakery is like baking a cake for the very first time for me, it is full of anticipation, wonders, imagination and most of all, intrigued and impatient to see the final outcome of it all. A film full of unexpected humour and magical delights, like an icing on a cake, yet it is moist full of heavy layering of textured fillings. It is glazed with eye-candy art direction and unique cinematography, yet the director approaches the subject matter in such great seriousness, with sprinkles of lightness of dusted chocolate powder that it oozes realness in every bite. A mixture of suspense, thriller, romance, comedy and drama in one film that is hard to let go. Four men, a bakery shop, what sort of stories can be told here, you may wonder? Plentiful. Nonetheless, to make a perfect cake, everything has to come together in the most precise manner, the exact amount of ingredients, the freshness of it, the amount, the proportions, the temperature, and so much more. Baking a cake is as therapeutic as watching an interestingly told film like this one. The result, a mouth watering and satisfying bite till the last piece. My cake turned out to be more than I could have imagined - the softness of love between men and the fullness of the simplicity of how love could be presented.