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Audio Format: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Video Format: Full Screen Languages: Korean Subtitles: English, Chinese Region Code: 3 Year Made: 2000 Running Time: 106
 Long before this film hit the theaters, I Wish I Had a Wife drew interest for its pairing of two of Korea's most respected stars: Sol Kyung-gu (Peppermint Candy) and Jeon Do-yeon (Happy End). In their first crack at romantic comedy, Sol and Jeon take on parts which, although lacking the emotional extremes of their previous roles, are nonetheless the very heart of this film.
Sol plays a lovesick bank teller who can't get marriage off his mind. He records videos for his future wife, telling her how curious he is to find out who she will turn out to be. When he meets a former classmate (played by Jin Hee-kyung), he thinks he's finally found his match. Jeon, meanwhile, plays a teacher who works across the street from his bank. After a few accidental meetings, she works up the courage to ask him out, but is rudely rebuffed.
This is the debut work of director Park Heung-shik, who apart from making short films also worked as assistant director to Hur Jin-ho for Christmas in August (1998). The influence of the latter film can be seen in I Wish I Had a Wife: in its visual style, its grounding in everyday life, and also in a subtle reworking of Christmas's famous umbrella scene.
At times the film's music recalls a Sleepless in Seattle or When Harry Met Sally, but I Wish I Had a Wife is a much different kind of movie. Content to revel in the ordinary, it lingers on unimportant details and its heroes' various quirks. Although at times this comes at the expense of plot, it imparts to the film a sense of honesty, as well as an unhurried pleasure. By the latter half of the film we begin to feel quite intimate with the characters.
Ultimately this movie feels like a comfortable old pair of jeans. While it makes no effort to jump out and grab one's attention, viewers will be pulled in by its light humor and the way it makes its characters' lives feel so familiar.
Kim Bong-soo is a manager who has been working at a small bank in an apartment complex for three years. For three years there, or for 23 years if you count his school days, he has never been absent or late. However, he purposely decides to skip work one day. There is only one reason. Inside a subway train that has suddenly stopped on his way to work, everyone around him reaches for their cell phones to call someone. At that moment, he realizes that he does not have a single person to call. But he does not know that inside a private educational institute across the street from the bank that he works at, there is a 27-year old woman who is looking over to him. Her name is Wonju. Bong-soo and Won-ju run into each other every day, at the noodle restaurant, at the bank and at the bus station. When Won-ju tries to make overtures to Bong-soo, he unconsciously spurs her. The two run into each other repeatedly but Bong-soo is till oblivious to Won-ju. One day, while looking over the bank's security camera tapes, Bong-soo finds someone pitifully calling out his name to the small, closed camera that does not even record sound.
 
  
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