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Once We Were Us
Movie

Once We Were Us

2025 • Drama, Romance

Woke Score
2
out of 10

Plot

N/A

Overall Series Review

Once We Were Us is a South Korean romantic drama film, a remake of the 2018 Chinese film Us and Them. The story focuses on the decades-long, tumultuous relationship between Lee Eun-ho and Han Jeong-won, charting their passionate first love and their subsequent reunion after a ten-year separation. The central conflict is the collision of their youthful romance with the "harsh realities of life" and the challenging economic conditions of Seoul around 2008. The narrative is explicitly framed as a universal story about the intense love, messy breakups, and nostalgic regret that many people experience as they grow into adulthood. The film employs a poignant cinematic device of showing the past in color and the present in black and white to emphasize how the memory of their love eclipses the current, stark reality of their lives. It functions primarily as an emotionally grounded, character-driven melodrama.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The narrative centers on an ethnically homogenous Korean cast and focuses on class and socio-economic conflict, such as the characters' struggles with ambition and the cost of living in Seoul. This context does not involve the Western 'intersectional lens' and contains no critique of 'whiteness' or forced diversity.

Oikophobia2/10

The film's conflict is rooted in the specific economic and social pressures of a particular time in Seoul's recent history, specifically the difficulties faced by young adults in 2008. This is a grounded social critique of economic reality, not a broad demonization of the nation or its civilizational heritage, thus avoiding the 'civilizational self-hatred' trope.

Feminism3/10

The female lead, Jeong-won, pursues a career as an architect, and the inability of both characters to reconcile their personal dreams with their relationship contributes to their breakup. The male lead, Eun-ho, is portrayed as a sincere and empathetic character who supports her ambitions. While the female lead's career trajectory is a key plot point, the movie is framed as a universal story of shared responsibility for the breakup, not a 'Girl Boss' narrative where the male is incompetent or where motherhood is disparaged.

LGBTQ+1/10

The story is a straightforward, traditional heterosexual romance that charts the timeline of a male-female relationship and its collapse due to external pressures. Alternative sexualities or explicit deconstruction of the nuclear family are not present in the main plot or themes.

Anti-Theism1/10

The central themes revolve around love, economic reality, ambition, and regret. There is no indication of hostility toward religion, specifically Christianity, or any focus on moral relativism. The conflict is entirely secular and psychological.