‘My Love’ tugs at the emotions with practiced grip – Efron in talks to join Jackman’s ‘Greatest Showman’

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LOS ANGELES, June 16, (RTRS): A celebration of very longterm marital contentment, “My Love, Don’t Cross That River” portrays the blissful kinship of true soulmates in their nineties when we meet them — a juncture at which Death does not spare meeting them, either. Moyoung Jin’s documentary hit a sentimental sweet spot on home turf, becoming South Korea’s most successful independent theatrical feature (fictive or otherwise) ever. Cultural differences and less potent later progress are likely to make this undeniably charming verite romance have a much smaller Stateside imprint as it rolls out in NYC cinemas June 17, and Greater Los Angeles ones the following week. But it should do very well as a home-formats item within Korean-American communities, perhaps even enjoying crossover traffic to ethnically unaffiliated senior markets, primarily via broadcast sales.

“100-year-old lovebirds” Byoungman Jo and Gyeyeul Chang are already somewhat famous for their devotional longevity when we first glimpse them after 75 years of marriage. They’re cute as kittens — and despite their advanced ages, nearly as playful, with a relationship that could hardly be more visibly still in the stages of “first love.” (We see them good-naturedly pranking one another with leaf, water and snow “fights,” amongst other hijinks outside their rural home.) They wed in the late 1930s, when he was an orphan hired to work in her parents’ smithery.

Decades later, children visit, some now grandparents themselves. But when the health of one twee elder declines, the other must figure out how to go on after the inseparable duo is separated.

“My Love” is charming, but not always convincing in equal measure. There’s a certain air of suspicious contrivance: Do the lead characters really always wear such pristine, loudly colored silks to do yard work and so forth? In that and other ways, they sometimes seem to playing up for the camera — or rather Jin seems to be semi-staging an idyll of long-shelf-life love high on adorability and low on conflict. The subjects (reportedly shot over 15 months’ course) appear magically oblivious to the presence of a film crew, without being the least bit senile. Like grandparents who put on a show of folksy sweetness when the youngsters show up — or like a lot of reality TV — “My Love” tugs at the emotions with a practiced grip.

At least in this case, those emotions tapped are sentimentally tender rather than gloating and cynical. It’s a sweet movie — just not not wholly a “documentary” to whose reality you’d necessarily trust your own grandmother when depositing her at the rest home. There, one would require a little less treacly salesmanship, and a little more verified fact-checking. It’s not that “My Love” feels inherently dubious; it’s that its execution is just a little too smiling-through-tears slick to be swallowed whole.

Also:

LOS ANGELES: Fox is in negotiations with Zac Efron to join Hugh Jackman in the P.T. Barnum biopic “The Greatest Showman on Earth.”

Fox had no comment on Efron’s possible attachment.

The project has been in development since 2009 with Jackman attached. The contemporary musical is set to be scripted by Jenny Bicks (“Sex and the City”) and produced by Chernin Entertainment, Laurence Mark and Jackman.

Michael Gracey is attached to direct.

Jackman will play the showman with a specialty in hoaxing a gullible public as he creates the three-ring Barnum Bailey Circus that made him famous. Barnum had gained fame as a 19th Century impressario with tours of Tom Thumb and the singer Jenny Lind; he began calling it the “Greatest Show on Earth” near the end of his career.

The project is a major priority for the studio given its relationship with Jackman and the lengths it has taken to get the film off the ground. Should Efron’s deal go through, it would serve to solidify the project and give it a shot of momentum.

Efron is having a busy summer with “Neighbors 2: Sorority Uprising” bowing in May and the Fox comedy “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” opening next month. Efron is also set to star in Paramount’s comedy tentpole “Baywatch” which opens next May and also stars Dwayne Johnson.

He is repped by CAA and Alchemy Entertainment. His attorney is Patti Felker.

 

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