An emotional Korean Movie that makes me think after watching. The title is based on a Da Fu's poem sentence "A good rain knows when to come". That's right as Chinese says "God, Earth and Men are now understanding". When a woman hesitates to show her emotion so the rain is her lifeboat. The writer has touched the inner part of each soul. All people have the passion, all people have the desire. But inside of each soul is a thinking head with reason. True love between 2 persons will meet at the end. The matter is how and when it meets. A bright and romantic movie with Sichuan beautiful bamboo trees and interesting Panda activities.

It would be a spoiler if I were to state one of the main reasons I love this movie. I can say, however, that the film is very much about a Chinese experience, and the fact that it is directed by a Korean is what makes it interesting. There are other good things about the movie so I'll work with them and save the spoiler.

A Good Rain Knows is nice to look at. It's photographed in crisp and bright colors and makes great use of it's locale, Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province. It's got dancing in a downtown square, bamboo groves, even a scene with a panda bear. Gao Yuanyuan as Mei, a tourist guide in a Chengdu park, has never looked more radiant. Jung Woo-sung is a South Korean heartthrob but his acting ability is curious. He always seems nervous. He plays an architect, Dongha, who travels to Chengdu on assignment and runs into Mei, an old and dear friend. There is no plot to speak of, just the unfolding of their past and present relationship that gives the film its purpose.

Dongha, a Korean, and Mei, a Chinese, communicate almost exclusively in English. Since their relationship is presented as fragile and tentative, and since Jung is a nervous actor anyway, having them communicate in broken but understandable English is a stroke of genius from director Hur. If you're bothered or unmoved by the stilted verbiage the film won't work.

In typical Hur fashion, and this film sees him in perfect stride, not much happens. We're presented with a couple characters testing the water to see if, when, and how love will factor into their relationship. The lens slowly gets closer, revealing inner layers, until a small explosion occurs. And in typical Hur fashion this explosion takes place far beneath the surface. We know it's a big one but all we see are the rippling aftershocks (hint) on the surface.

Hur is a fascinating director. In some ways his films are just cheesy romances with questionable soundtracks, but he possesses an emotional intelligence and an eye for subtle soul-searching details that make his films powerful when he gets it right. He got it right this time. A good rain knows when to fall.

It's a given that the latest Hur Jin-ho film is going to be a bit of a romantic slow-burner, tracing the delicate path of attraction and flirtation and connecting it to the variable weather of the seasons (Christmas in August, April Snow). It's almost inevitable that this seasonal disruption is also going to signal a darker side to the tender relationships just recently established, with sickness, death, infidelity or simple incompatibility leading to trouble and break-up. You could call the films of Hur Jin-ho bittersweet, but the bitterness usually has a bit of a kick to it. With a title like "A Good Rain Knows", you can be sure that Hur Jin-ho's latest film follows the now familiar template.

The delicate relationship in its tentative first flower of spring is one that has been rekindled when Korean businessman Park Dong-ha arrives in Chengdu in the Sichuan province of China and re-encounters an old-flame, May, a Chinese girl who he once studied with in college, now working as a tour guide at a park dedicated to the poet Da-Fu while she works on a thesis for college. They both have different memories of just how close they used to be, Dong-ha believing that they were practically girlfriend and boyfriend, May denying that they even kissed. Nonetheless, Dong-ha is attracted to May, and there are signs in the affectionate friendship that develops that they may be able to restart a relationship that has been divided by time and distance.

This is all handled by the director with customary delicacy and a lyrical attention to the detail of attraction and romance. The seasons are of course evoked in it being spring when May and Dong-ha meet, the rain playing an important part in bringing them together and holding them slightly apart, the pleasure of anticipation and timing noted in references to Da-Fu's poem that "a good rain knows when to come". The sense of rebuilding is there also in Dong-ha's work, his company sending him over to sort out arrangements for the reconstruction work after the devastating Sichuan earthquake the previous year. Hur also uses the image of a bicycle to good effect, as a metaphor for relationships, learning to fall in love again being like learning to ride a bike again.

However cleverly evoked – the gentle music, the gazing thoughtfully into the distance, the walks in the park and to the zoo to see the pandas (terrific panda footage though) – all this is rather insipid stuff that brings to mind the director's airbrushed efforts in the earlier April Snow, with the two leads rather blandly perfect and not assisted in achieving any greater emotional depth here on account of them having to communicate in faltering broken English. What of course keeps the viewer interested – if they are familiar with Hur Jin-ho – is anticipating when the director is going to drop the bombshell that shatters this cozy little arrangement. And inevitably, it comes with a bang...

Such is the reliability (and slight predictability) of the element of crushing tragedy eventually arriving in a Hur Jin-ho film, that one is inclined to think there is something either of parody or even sadism about it all, that the director is enjoying the slow build-up, before delighting in sadistically sticking the knife in. This isn't the case however. What Hur is interested in is exploring the boundaries of love and romance. As the otherwise comedic element of Mr Nam observes to the naïve Dong-ho, "love does have borders" and Hur explores these limiting factors on idealistic love, the boundaries where it fails, crashes and burns. Rather than being destructive then, it's these boundaries that define love and give it meaning, where otherwise it would indeed be bland and insipid.

This is all very well. A Good Rain Knows is beautifully filmed (if a little too clean and bright), played out with sensitivity and no small amount of irony and humour – a fine example of the director's work on this theme that will intrigue any viewer unfamiliar with his earlier films. For anyone else who has seen Christmas in August, One Fine Spring Day and in his last film Happiness (oh, the loaded irony in all those titles!) you will unfortunately have seen it all done before much better and with a great deal more bite than this.