Synopsis
Turn your back, enter, and close the door right in front of your eyes. Everything ends with that. If all of our relationships ended that way, would we be free and happy? Jšrg is somewhat shy, talks about his daughter and doesn’t look as though he won’t be able to survive the world. On the other hand, Marius, the motivational speaker, only has interest in women. The two meet at Marius’ motivational seminar and when Marius tries to help Jšrg open the door, the world changes. Just like Marius said, they’ve been taken out of the spaghetti bowl and put into a pudding bowl. The new rule that governs the pudding bowl states that ‘after the closings and the spaces are traded, no one will remember Jšrg and Marius’. Unlike the title, the film doesn’t have any fancy special effects, but the director effectively uses the “pudding bowl rule” to create a unique world. With the knowledge that only they have been transported to a different universe and only they remember each other, Jšrg and Marius rely on each other to carry on. Jšrg, who neither understands nor accepts the new universe, walks around dumbfounded, while Marius quickly accepts what has happened to them and enjoys a unified Germany. It’s almost as if the two characters represent East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sometimes the film seems to explore the short-lived relationships that never quite connect people. Could there really be open sea where modern man can understand the meaning of relationships? (LEE Byung-hee)