Never Forever

Never Forever

Unhappy bourgeois people seem to make the worst choices. When sullen, NYC housewife Sophie (Vera Farmiga, who stares blankly with utter conviction) discovers that her unstable Korean-American husband is shooting blanks, she snatches up an immigrant worker from Chinatown, Jihah, to impregnate her. Sophie and Jihah fall for each other and everything — surprise! — gets a little messy. Writer/director Gina Kim expects passion to emerge from the melodrama, but the central love story is not believable; the rich emotional core of the film is lost amid all the posturing. Never Forever is a character study in which characters are not studied but sent to sulk by rainy windows. Although Kim has her pulse on religious, racial, and social conflict, she relies too much on contrived plotting. She constructs her film with earnest self-assurance, but like its temperamental characters, she’s blind to her self-destructive decisions. 90 Minutes | Kendall Square