Even If This Love Disappears Tonight is the remake of a Japanese film and novel with an extended title that essentially means the same thing. The film is a sad story about a young high school girl who wakes up every day having forgotten the memories of the previous day. When a boy in her grade asks her out to get some bullies off his friend’s back, she decides to say yes because she gets to try something new for once. As expected, Seo-Yoon and Jae-Won’s lives are changed forever, but do they get their happy ending? The first half of the film is mostly happy memories that the kids make together to cherish afterwards. Except she doesn’t really get to cherish them; she can’t even remember them. But Seo-Yoon manages to keep her anterograde amnesia a secret until one day Jae-Won witnesses it in real time. Instead of getting mad, though, the high schooler is quick to tell Seo-Yoon to forget about it all and simply keep going as is, telling her that they should trick the next-day version of her together. Will their plan work? For how long, and what happens at the end of the film? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
What Happens When Seo-Yoon Forgets Jae-Won?
The first time something really goes wrong is when Seo-Yoon falls asleep on the bus after a wonderful date she’s had with Jae-Won. When she wakes up, she’s already forgotten all about it and doesn’t know who she’s sitting next to. Jae-Won does try to follow after her when she gets onto another bus in a panic, but this is when we first see him clutch his heart and double over, making it clear he’s not okay. Even If This Love Disappears Tonight is an aesthetic movie about a cute romance between a boy and a girl, it doesn’t actually get into any of the negative details. We never learn what’s wrong with Jae-Won’s heart. We just know it’s a defect he’s had since birth. This puts him at great risk as it is. But to add to that, we know that his mother died not too long ago as well, making his father the saddest character in this film. I don’t know how he can be smiling through all that pain, because if I were in his place, I’d have crumbled to dust for sure. But anyway, we already have a hint at this point that Jae-Won is going to die, but we just didn’t know how that ending was going to turn out.
Without telling her about his heart, Jae-Won tells Seo-Yoon not to mention that he knows of her memory loss in her journals. He’s not only trying to make things easier for her; this gives him an excuse never to tell her that there’s something wrong with him. For a little while at least, they can both pretend everything is normal. If Seo-Yoon had put down this memory, she may have felt too guilty to treat Jae-Won the same. She would’ve distanced herself, knowing he knows that she can’t remember things. A classic flaw in cases where one party tells the other not to fall in love with them for real. Fake dating’s fun until one is dying and the other has no memory to keep their “fake” love alive.
Why Can’t Seo-Yoon Remember?
The film doesn’t explain a crucial part of this story, something that we’ve become so used to finding out. If someone has a condition like memory loss, we have to know what caused it, don’t we? But this movie subverts our expectations, and hopes we’re not too curious about the two main reasons for our sadness. What is wrong with Jae-Won’s heart, and why can’t Seo-Yoon remember? All we know is that the latter was in an accident when she was younger. What happened on that day, we will never find out, but that is not the point of this story. Whatever it was injured her hypothalamus to the point that she started to have amnesia. Can it heal, though? Apparently, it can, because by the end of the film, Seo-Yoon’s started to be able to remember her days, and she seems to be healing. If only this could’ve happened while Jae-Won was still around, but alas, that would give us an almost happy ending.
Did Seo-Yoon Also Break A Rule?
When they first get together, Seo-Yoon tells Jae-Won that he has to follow 3 rules: one is that they would keep communication short, the second is that they talk only after school, and the 3rd and most important one is that they’ve got to make sure they do not catch real feelings for each other. Obviously Jae-Won breaks this rule pretty early on, but can Seo-Yoon really break it when she can’t even remember the guy?
Well, yes and no. The film is titled “Even If This Love Disappears Tonight,” which means that Seo-Yoon has definitely fallen for Jae-Won. But how could this happen if she can’t make any real memories with him? Jae-Won tells Seo-Yoon that the body remembers even if the mind doesn’t. That’s why, even when her bestie, Ji-Min, deletes all the journal entries of Jae-Won and erases him from Seo-Yoon’s memories, she continues to draw him. Sure, she doesn’t know who he is, but his memory ignites a feeling of familiarity inside of her. Similarly, when Jae-Won dies, Seo-Yoon can’t remember him as a human being, as a solid piece of memory, but all she knows is that she’s crying at the thought of his death. This means she did break the rule, and she definitely remembers the love, even if she doesn’t remember the person.
Does Seo-Yoon Remember Jae-Won?
In Even If This Love Disappears Tonight’s ending, Seo-Yoon starts to recollect little things, like when she tells her parents that she could fall asleep alright the previous night. This is groundbreaking in her case, and it means she’s on her way to recovery, even if it may not be a full one. But, as she’s getting better, Seo-Yoon reminds herself of everything that she did with Jae-Won, when Ji-Min returns all the memories she’d saved up in a box. I guess she knew she’d want to give them back to her. The beach, the arcade, the rain—everything relates to the one guy. Even if it hurts, Ji-Min can’t even dream about keeping her promise to Jae-Won, because Seo-Yoon deserves to remember. Finally, she gives her everything she needs to remember him again.
Additionally, it seems like both people had some idea of the other being unwell. In a flashback, we see Seo-Yoon having written down Jae-Won’s name in the cardiology section of the hospital when they were both there, and Jae-Won did see her at the time too, much before they got to know each other. I wonder if this means he knew she was unwell and still chose to get with her or agreed to do it because of it. Ultimately, both people who expected never to have full lives got to experience something rare, pure, and beautiful. Seo-Yoon even keeps her promise to Jae-Won to go back to the beach. But just as happiness can’t last forever, even pain must find its end. In the end, Seo-Yoon plans on remembering Jae-Won little by little, as he starts to fade from everyone else’s memory. Jae-Won and Seo-Yoon’s story might be a happy one, but the ending is especially sad because they couldn’t even say goodbye. That would’ve been a memory too hard to revisit, so maybe it all happened for a good reason.
The film pulls a reverse Uno, kind of like My Sister’s Keeper. No, I won’t give you spoilers, but what I mean is it does something unexpected in an already heartbreaking story to shock us further. Already we knew things were sad because Seo-Yoon couldn’t remember things, but that issue was solved before this story even began. But what happened with Jae-Won is something that hits us as a curveball, because initially we just think he’s a really nice person, which is why he helps his deskmate and even befriends Seo-Yoon in the first place. But the real truth is, if he hadn’t clutched his heart that one time, his dying would’ve come at us completely out of the blue.
Is It A Happy Ending?
Some would call this a happy ending because Seo-Yoon gets her memories back, but it’s a blessing and a curse considering how the one person she’d like to make new memories with is gone forever. Maybe it’s a boon that she’s got it all jotted down and her body remembers him so perfectly, so that’s something that might never leave her, the ability to sketch him perfectly. But it’s a sad ending that leaves us devastated for both lead characters, who could’ve had something great.
