“You live in my fantasy/ although everything is now falling apart.”

These were the famous lines of the legendary Seo Tai-ji’s 1992 song “You in My Fantasy” that inspired up-and-coming director Kang Ji-na to change the title of her feature debut film, a tale of a young man losing his girlfriend in a tragic accident.

The film “You in My Fantasy” (English title “Dear Dolphin”) is a rare movie, as Seo’s Seo Taiji Company rarely grants permission for other artists to use his music for their works. Kang managed to obtain the company’s approval to use the iconic singer’s music for her lyrical fantasy film that digs deep into the themes of loss, death and destruction. 

She named the movie after the song, “You in my Fantasy,” and included a scene where its characters sing along to the song while riding bikes together.

Born in 1980, Kang grew up listening to Seo’s music, which dominated the local music scene in the 1990s. She belongs to the “Seo Tai-ji Kid” generation, and still listens to his songs whenever she feels down.

Her feature debut, however, is not an homage to Seo, nor an nostalgic tale about the 90s.

It was the fantasy elements of the song that inspired her, although the 1990s song is mainly known for its young, innovative spirit yearning for a change.

The film tells the story of Hyuk-geun (played by actor Lee Hee-joon), a nurse, who loses his florist girlfriend Cha-gyeong (played by actress Han Ye-ri) in a tragic bike accident.

The bike belonged to Cha-gyeong’s best friend Gi-ok (played by actress Lee Young-jin), and no one knew the brake was broken when Cha-gyeong took it out for a ride. Gi-ok used to have a secret crush on Hyuk-geun, and when her best friend dies in the senseless event, she begins to suffer an utter sense of guilt. At the same time, she cannot control her feelings for the grieving Hyuk-geun, who is in denial of Cha-gyeong’s death. He sees hallucinations of Cha-gyeong, often covered in blood and calling out his name.

The fantasy movie then shows Cha-gyeong, who seems to be in a limbo between the world of the living and the afterlife. The limbo takes the form of an aquarium, where she peacefully plays with gentle, likable bevy of dolphins in and out of water.

Kang repeatedly uses the image of water and dolphins along with Cha-gyeong, with an almost dreamlike intensity. The aquarium is the place where she familiarizes herself with water, which is clearly a symbol of death and afterlife.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” says Cha-gyeong to a dolphin trainer, who obviously is an angel of death, with an innocent, cherubic smile.

“I’ve been always scared of water after watching my sister drown when I was little,” Kang said in a press conference last week. “I still can’t have my head in the water. In the movie, once you are in the water, you are going into a different world, a different dimension.

“And I used the dolphins to comfort Cha-gyeong,” she continued. “You feel protected when you are with a group of big creatures. I didn’t want her to be alone when she goes through the transition from the world of living to the other. And it was important for Hyuk-geun and Gi-ok to know that Cha-gyeong is in good hands, and that she is okay. Once they know that, they are able to move on and live their lives.”

The film is a detailed cinematic psycho-analysis of loss, which involves, in Seo’s words, “everything in one’s world falling apart,” with beautiful, lyrical images and poetic metaphors.

The film won the CGV Movie Collage Award at this year’s Jeonju International Film Festival.

“Dear Dolphin” opens in theaters Thursday.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)