The Beauty Inside

The Beauty Inside (2015) is a South Korean romantic fantasy. It is the feature debut of director Baik (Baek Jong-yeol), who had worked in commercials. It is based on the 2012 American "social film" of the same name, which was conceived by Intel and Toshiba. On his eighteenth birthday, Woo-jin wakes up in a body that isn't his own. From then on his appearance changes every day. He may be a man or a woman, old or young, Korean or foreign.

Woo-jin builds a life around this condition. He works as a furniture designer and keeps his contact with the world limited. Then he meets Yi-soo, a woman he is drawn to, and has to decide whether to risk intimacy with someone who has never seen the same face twice.

The film treats a high-concept premise as a question about love. Woo-jin is played by many different actors, and the cast includes Kim Dae-myung, Do Ji-han, Bae Seong-woo and Park Shin-hye. Han Hyo-joo plays Yi-soo, the one constant in the film.

The film argues that love attaches to a person's essence, not their appearance. Yi-soo is asked to love someone whose face keeps changing. The film suggests that this is a heightened version of what every long-term partner does as bodies age and moods shift.

It also refuses to make this easy. Reviewers noted that the film's emotional core is Yi-soo's side of the story, and that loving "the inside" is a daily effort that strains her mental health. The film presents love as a repeated decision, not a magical certainty.

The shifting faces can be read as a metaphor for any long relationship, in which a partner changes with age, illness and mood. A second reading is a metaphor for mental illness or disability, where the loved one 'isn't themselves' on some days. A third reading, raised by critics, is a feminist one: the story is as much about Yi-soo's emotional labor as about Woo-jin's condition. Others note that the premise is safely treated, and that the film avoids exploring gender fluidity or race in depth.

The film belongs to a wave of Korean high-concept romances. It adapts a branded American web project into a feature, and it was later chosen for an American remake. The SCMP critic argued that, in a country where cosmetic surgery is common, the story would have hit harder if the female lead's face had been the one that changed. IMDb lists a Metascore of 48, which reflects mixed critical opinion.

Audiences praised Han Hyo-joo's performance and the charm of the cast of many Woo-jins. IMDb users rated it 7.3/10 and called it a sweet romance with an odd premise. MyDramaList reviewers also rated it highly. The main criticisms were that the premise doesn't hold up under scrutiny and that the script favours melodrama over deeper questions. The SCMP review called it frustratingly safe, though occasionally touching. The overall verdict is that it is a charming, imperfect romance.