L'art Reste - TV Tropes

A musical that premiered in 2022 with music by Moon Hye-sung and Jeong Hye-ji, with lyrics by Kim Han-sol.

February 29, 2004: In New York City, USA, elderly painter and art critic Kim Hyang-an looks back on her life, and the people who have departed before her, particularly her late husband, the painter Kim Whanki...

February 29, 1936: In Gyeongseong, Korea, university student Byeon Dong-rim sits down in a cafe with her copy of The Brothers Karamazov, and a young man fiddling with a sugar cube tries to strike up a conversation. It turns out he's a poet, and he goes by the pen name Yi Sang...

Hyang-an's story and romance with Whanki is told Back to Front, interspersed with scenes of Dong-rim's relationship with Sang. In the end, they meet in the middle...

Originally from Korea, this musical had a production staged in Japan, translated by Sonim who also played Hyang-an. An English workshop has been held in New York. DVDs have been recorded in both Korea and Japan.

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Contains Examples Of:

• Anachronic Order: The play goes back and forth between Hyang-an's Back to Front story and Dong-rim's linear one.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Yi Sang phrases his as "Shall we die together?"
• Back to Front: Hyang-an and Whanki's story is told this way, starting with Hyang-an's death, and ending with the moment they first met.
• Bookworm: Yi Sang thinks of Dong-rim this way before he gets up the nerve to start a conversation.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Sang keeps inviting Dong-rim for walks, giving her poems to read, and then just... leaving. Dong-rim knows there's a romance waiting to bloom there, but she wonders why he won't just take that step. When she says she won't meet him anymore, however...
• Comfort the Dying: Dong-rim to Sang when she finally finds him in Tokyo.
• Cute Bookworm: How Sang sees Dong-rim before he talks to her.
• Dashed Plot Line: Hyang-an's story covers over 60 years, while Dong-rim's takes place over around a year or two. Hyang-an's story has jumps, some over a decade.
• Death Song: both men get one, Whanki near the beginning, and Sang at the end.
• Flashback B-Plot: Dong-rim's story is this to Hyang-an's.
• Future Self Reveal: It's hinted all along, for Genre Savvy viewers, but not stated for sure until the very end, when Hyang-an introduces herself as Byeon Dong-rim.
• Grief Song: Dong-rim gets one after Yi Sang dies.
• Her Heart Will Go On: But not that easily. This is essentially the meaning behind having Hyang-an and Dong-rim as separate characters.
• Historical Domain Character: All three characters are real people. The Kim Whanki Museum in Korea participated in the production.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Yi Sang has tuberculosis and dies at age 27.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Sang has never found anyone who understands his poetry the way Dong-rim does.
• My Future Self and Me: Hyang-an and Dong-rim "meet" at various points in the play, and comfort and inspire each other.
• Rewatch Bonus: Hyang-an's story is told Back to Front, and scenes from her earlier life as Dong-rim come after later times. Unless you're already familiar with her life story, there are plenty of things that you will only understand a second time, like the significance of her and Whanki's art names.
• Secret Diary: Hyang-an and Dong-rim write in a red book. The uncomfortable possibility of having it found and read by someone else (Whanki, or this mysterious stranger who appears to Dong-rim calling herself Kim Hyang-an...)
• Sensitive Artist: All three of them.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: Part of why Yi Sang fell in love with Dong-rim. She understood his poetry in ways no one else had.
• Two Aliases, One Character: When she enters a relationship with Kim Whanki, Dong-rim asks him to give her his own art name, Hyang-an.