South Korea · Film · 2015
The Beauty Inside (2015)
Binge Brief
- Released on 20 August 2015, 126 to 127 minutes, distributed by NEW, produced by Yong Film
- Kim Woo-jin wakes as a different person every day; 123 actors play him across the film
- Han Hyo Joo plays Hong Yi-soo, the one constant, opposite all of them
- Seo Kang Joon is Woo-jin on day 92, a single-day cameo; he and Yoo Yeon Seok were the last two cast, announced on 25 February 2015
- It took about 2.06 million admissions and roughly 14.3 million US dollars
- Baek Jong-yeol won Best New Director at the 52nd Grand Bell Awards; Yang Jin-mo won Best Editing at the 36th Blue Dragon Awards
Synopsis
Kim Woo-jin goes to sleep and wakes up as somebody else. Not metaphorically: a different body, a different face, a different age, sometimes a different gender or nationality. It has happened every day since he was eighteen. He is still himself inside, with the same memory and the same voice in his head, and nobody looking at him would know it.
He has built a life that survives this. He makes furniture, because furniture does not need to recognise you. He has one friend who knows, Sang-baek, who handles everything that requires a consistent face. And he has arranged never to want anything that would require somebody to see him twice.
Then he meets Hong Yi-soo, who works in a furniture showroom, and the arrangement stops working. The film's real question is not how he tells her, it is what he is asking her to do once she believes him: love someone whose appearance is a new negotiation every morning, in public, for as long as it lasts.
A hundred and twenty-three actors play Woo-jin. Twenty-one of them get substantial screen time, including Park Shin Hye, Chun Woo Hee, Lee Dong Wook, Park Seo Joon, Go Ah Sung and the Japanese actress Juri Ueno. Seo Kang Joon is Woo-jin on day 92, in a passage after a quarrel, where the couple reconcile and find their way back to each other.
The Beauty Inside opened in South Korean cinemas on 20 August 2015 after its distribution rights had already sold to eleven Asian territories at the Cannes Film Market, and it reached North American screens through Well Go USA that September. Reviewers were split on how the premise held up at feature length: Rotten Tomatoes recorded a 70 percent approval from ten critics, while the Los Angeles Times' Katie Walsh called it "satisfying, charming and surprising, a film that keeps its supernatural elements grounded in reality."
Hollywood optioned the same premise for an English-language remake in January 2017, with Emilia Clarke announced for the lead role and a script from Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber. That version has not been made. The story returned to Korean screens on its own in 2018, as a separate television production with a different cast and a different premise for how the transformation works.
Why it still gets watched
The casting is the reason it endures. Getting 123 actors to play one man, twenty-one of them at length, is a stunt on paper and works on screen because the film gives each of them the same interiority rather than a turn. The audition pool ran to roughly 400 people.
It is also the film people come back to for the craft. Baek Jong-yeol came from advertising and music videos and made this as his first feature; it won him Best New Director at the Grand Bell Awards, and its editor Yang Jin-mo beat The Throne, Veteran, Ode to My Father and Assassination to Best Editing at the Blue Dragons, which in 2015 meant beating the four biggest Korean films of the year.
For Seo Kang Joon's filmography it is one day. Day 92, one reconciliation scene, opposite Han Hyo Joo. He and Yoo Yeon Seok were the final two names added to the ensemble, announced in February 2015 as the pair who completed it, and Korean coverage at the time singled out his eyes and his smile in the scene.
The Beauty Inside (2015) cast
Best scenes
Spoilers aheadThe moments people come back for, and where to find them. Episode numbers and outcomes are named, so come back to this one after watching if you would rather not know.
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The closing kiss circle
In the film's last stretch, Yi-soo kisses each version of Woo-jin in a single unbroken sequence, a moment split across thirteen different actors including Park Seo Joon, Lee Dong Wook, Seo Kang Joon, Lee Jin Wook, Kim Joo-hyuk and Yoo Yeon Seok. Han Hyo Joo told the Korean press that the men waiting their turn lined up outside a bathroom, toothbrushes in hand.
Filming locations
This is the one film of the three Seo Kang Joon made in 2014 and 2015 with a location record in the national archive. The Korean Movie Database lists fifty-two sites. Filming ran from 6 November 2014 into February 2015.
Among them, with the ones a visitor could actually find set in bold:
- Incheon Art Platform, run by the Incheon Foundation for Arts and Culture
- Gwangmyeong Station
- Dapsimni antique arcade
- Mapo Art Center
- Stanford Hotel Seoul, and the Christie Hotel in Sindang
- I'Park Mall at Yongsan Station
- Itaewon street
- Yeolumul Stadium, Incheon
- Hwanil High School
- Two private homes, one in Gugi-dong and one in Okin-dong, both credited to their owners by name in the archive record
- Working premises: a furniture factory, a tattoo parlour, an optician, an obstetrics clinic in Gangseo, a language school, a stationery shop in Songpa, several restaurants and cafes
The list above is thirty-nine of the fifty-two. The remaining thirteen were not captured when the archive record was read, and are not guessed at here.
Visual design and costumes
Themes and messages
Being loved and being seen are not the same problem. Yi-soo can believe Woo-jin without being able to live with what believing him costs her in public. The film is unusually honest that the difficulty is social rather than romantic.
A face is a piece of infrastructure. Woo-jin cannot hold a job that needs a consistent identity, cannot use a bank without help, cannot be greeted. The premise is fantastical and the consequences it works through are administrative, which is what makes it land.
The casting is the argument. Woo-jin is played across gender, age and nationality: Park Shin Hye, Chun Woo Hee and Go Ah Sung are among the female Woo-jins, Juri Ueno plays a foreign one, and children and elderly men are separately cast. The film could have made its point in dialogue and instead makes it by making the audience keep accepting a new face as the same person.
The other person is the one who has to choose. Woo-jin has no options. Yi-soo does, and the film gives her the whole of its second half to decide, without treating hesitation as a failure of love.
Interesting facts
- 123 actors played Woo-jin, 21 of them in substantial roles and the rest in face-only appearances, cast from an audition pool of roughly 400 people.
- The day numbers are not sequential. Credited days include 1, 18, 33, 43, 45, 60, 61, 64, 74, 75, 78, 81, 82, 84, 91, 92, 93, 100, 101, 109 and 123. Seo Kang Joon has day 92.
- Seo Kang Joon and Yoo Yeon Seok were cast last, announced on 25 February 2015 as the two who completed the ensemble.
- It was the director's first feature. Baek Jong-yeol, credited internationally as Baik, came from advertising and music videos, and won Best New Director at the 52nd Grand Bell Awards for it.
- Fifty-two locations. Filming ran from 6 November 2014 into February 2015 and the national archive's record lists fifty-two separate sites, from the Incheon Art Platform to a tattoo parlour, a secondary school and a stationery shop in Songpa.
- The theme song predates the film by three years. True Romance by CITIZENS! came out in 2012 and was licensed in rather than written for the picture.
- Its Best Editing win was against the year's giants. Yang Jin-mo took the 36th Blue Dragon award over The Throne, Veteran, Ode to My Father and Assassination.
- The source material was an advertisement. The 2012 American original was a branded series sponsored by Intel and Toshiba, and it won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
- Two figures in circulation are worth distrusting. The budget is given as 4.5 billion won by namu.wiki and 6.5 billion by Korean Wikipedia, unresolved; and the film's own Wikipedia table splits the Blue Dragon cinematography nomination into two, when the 36th ceremony has a single combined cinematography and lighting category with Kim Tae-kyung and Hong Seung-cheol nominated jointly.
Remakes and other versions
This film sits in the middle of a chain of three works, and it is worth setting out in order.
Upstream, 2012: an advertisement. The source is The Beauty Inside, an American "social film" directed by Drake Doremus, made as a six-episode branded series sponsored by Intel and Toshiba, in which viewers could audition through Facebook to play the protagonist. It won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and took commercial awards at the 2013 Clio Awards.
This film, 2015. Baek Jong-yeol's feature debut, which turned the premise into a 126-minute romance and cast 123 actors in the lead role.
Downstream, 2018: a JTBC drama. The Beauty Inside returned as a sixteen-episode Monday-Tuesday series starring Seo Hyun-jin and Lee Min-ki, with its own cast, its own soundtrack album and its own entry in every database. It changes the premise substantially: there the face changes only for one week a month, and the second lead cannot recognise faces at all.
Seo Kang Joon is in the middle link only. He is not in the 2012 original and not in the 2018 drama.
One practical warning for anyone looking up the music: the Spotify album titled "The Beauty Inside (Original Television Soundtrack)" belongs to the 2018 drama, not to this film. No official Spotify album exists for the film's score.
Soundtrack
Starting the player loads Spotify, which sets its own cookies.
| Track | Artist |
|---|---|
| True Romance (ending theme) | CITIZENS! |
| Beauty Inside | The Soundtrack Kings |
| Best Friend | The Soundtrack Kings |
| 설레이다 (Fluttering) | The Soundtrack Kings |
| 첫 데이트 (First Date) | The Soundtrack Kings |
| Amapola (guitar version) | The Soundtrack Kings |
| One Day, Suddenly | The Soundtrack Kings |
| 그녀 (She) | The Soundtrack Kings |
| 사랑이란 (Love Is...) | The Soundtrack Kings |
| U-Jin | The Soundtrack Kings |
| 이별 (Separation) | The Soundtrack Kings |
| True Romance (Populette remix) | CITIZENS! |
Awards
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Recipient | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 52nd Grand Bell Awards | Best New Director | Baek Jong Yeol | Won |
| 2015 | 52nd Grand Bell Awards | Best Actress | Han Hyo Joo | Nominated |
| 2015 | 52nd Grand Bell Awards | Best Screenplay | Kim Sun Jung and Park Jung Ye | Nominated |
| 2015 | 36th Blue Dragon Film Awards | Best Editing | Yang Jin Mo | Won |
| 2015 | 36th Blue Dragon Film Awards | Best Cinematography and Lighting | Kim Tae Kyung and Hong Seung Cheol | Nominated |
| 2015 | 36th Blue Dragon Film Awards | Best Music | Jo Young Wook | Nominated |
| 2015 | 36th Blue Dragon Film Awards | Best Actress | Han Hyo Joo | Nominated |
Frequently asked questions
Which Woo-jin is Seo Kang Joon?
Day 92. He is credited as Woo-jin 92 on both MyDramaList and HanCinema. His segment falls after a quarrel between Woo-jin and Yi-soo: the couple fall out, reconcile, and confirm where they stand. Korean press covering the casting in August 2015 wrote about his eyes and his smile in the scene opposite Han Hyo Joo. It is one day of screen time, and English Wikipedia's filmography marks it as a cameo.
How many actors play Woo-jin?
A hundred and twenty-three. Twenty-one of them have substantial roles; the rest appear as faces only, cast from an audition pool of around four hundred people. The credited day numbers run 1, 18, 33, 43, 45, 60, 61, 64, 74, 75, 78, 81, 82, 84, 91, 92, 93, 100, 101, 109 and 123.
Is The Beauty Inside film the same as the 2018 drama?
No. They are separate productions that share a title and a premise. This is the 2015 feature directed by Baek Jong-yeol with Han Hyo Joo. The 2018 version is a sixteen-episode JTBC drama with Seo Hyun-jin and Lee Min-ki, and it changes the rules: there the face changes for one week a month rather than daily. Seo Kang Joon is in the film and not in the drama. The two records are linked on this page.
How does The Beauty Inside ending play out?
Yi-soo has to decide whether she can live with a partner who is a different person to everyone else every day, and the film does not pretend that decision is easy or that loving him settles it. It resolves on her terms rather than his.
Where can I watch The Beauty Inside film?
Tubi carries it free with ads and Rakuten Viki has it on subscription with a free tier in some regions. Apple TV and Prime Video rent or sell it. Note that the JustWatch entry that surfaces for this title is the 2018 drama, not the film.
Is it based on a true story?
No. The premise is fiction. What is true is the origin: the story began as a 2012 American branded series sponsored by Intel and Toshiba, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.
Where was The Beauty Inside filmed?
At fifty-two separate sites, which the Korean Movie Database records in full. They include the Incheon Art Platform, Gwangmyeong Station, the Dapsimni antique arcade, Mapo Art Center, the Stanford Hotel Seoul, I'Park Mall at Yongsan Station, Itaewon street, Yeolumul Stadium in Incheon and Hwanil High School, along with two private homes and a long list of shops and restaurants. Filming ran from 6 November 2014 into February 2015.
Did it win any awards?
Two wins. Baek Jong-yeol took Best New Director at the 52nd Grand Bell Awards, and Yang Jin-mo took Best Editing at the 36th Blue Dragon Film Awards, beating The Throne, Veteran, Ode to My Father and Assassination. Han Hyo Joo was nominated for Best Actress at both ceremonies, and the film was also nominated for screenplay, cinematography and lighting, and music.
Is there an OST album on Spotify?
Not for the film. The album came out on 4 September 2015 with 26 tracks, but it is not on Spotify. The Spotify album called The Beauty Inside (Original Television Soundtrack) is the 2018 drama's soundtrack, a different album for a different production; do not mistake one for the other.
Is The Beauty Inside worth watching?
Yes, and for more than the casting gimmick. It is a well-made film about what it costs the other person to love someone the world cannot recognise, and it is unusually patient about letting her hesitate. Han Hyo Joo has to hold the whole thing together opposite twenty-one different scene partners, and she does.
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