The Recipe (film)


The Recipe is a 2010 South Korean film about a television producer who finds out many surprising truths while tracking down the story about a mysterious bean paste stew. Behind the captivating taste lies a woman’s unfortunate life and love story.

Plot

Jang Hye-jin is an ordinary woman whose doenjang jjigae is to die for but only very few have tried it. They claimed the scent alone was so heavenly it was as if all around didn't matter.
When a notorious murderer on death row requests Jang’s soup as his last meal, television producer Choi Yoo-jin starts looking for Jang and the recipe. While looking, Chou Yoo-jin discovers how police were only able to catch the killer due to him walking into a kitchen with the doenjang jjigae cooking. The killer was so captivated by the stew he didn't even notice the police arriving to arrest him. The scent also froze the police until a chill breeze blew it away. They waited for the killer to finish before arresting but wondered what it must have tasted like.
Jang is no where to be found and upon Choi's journey he learns she died while searching for her love, Kim Hyun-soo but hopes to discover the recipe.

Cast

Twelve years after her last film, Rub Love, director Anna Lee mixes two different genres - the thriller and the love story. The English title, The Recipe, contains a lot of meaning: a record of a person’s life, a memory of taste, an experience of loss and a chronicle of hurts. In this sense, the film is a recipe for everything. Lee illustrates the obsession with memories of love and a fatalistic point of view. The soybean soup recipe contains pain, longing and salvation. In a sense, the recipe is the very history of Korea’s memory and tradition.