So often in Hollywood films we see the high points of love affairs. Usually they seem so dramatic, so over baked in nature, so absolutely, artificially exciting, we walk away in some sort of funk, wondering why our own real-life relationships seem so "normal" and even a bit boring in comparison. But we know a thing or two about being in love that Hollywood hasn't quite figured out; I'm talking about the downtime. You know, the moments when nothing is really going on or even something so subtle could be happening that it drifts beneath the radar screen until it surprises us, not always in the most pleasant way.

One Fine Spring Day (South Korea/Hong Kong/Japan), a new film detailing the rapid rise and fall of a short-term love affair, offers such an examination. To be sure, the film offers the requisite wild highs of what it feels like to be drunk with rapture and first love; to feel completely intoxicated and taken over by the newness of a developing relationship. But it also explores something else, something smaller and more difficult to capture - the subtlety of how a relationship develops - and disintegrates - in small day-to-day details.

Set in modern-day Japan, the plot of One Fine Spring Day is deceptive in its simplicity. Two young sound engineers meet, fall in love…then fall out of love. For the young woman, Eun-Sun (Yoo Ji-Tae), the

disconnect seems a matter of mechanical necessity. But for the young man, Sang-Woo (Lee Young-Ae), initially reluctant to open his life to the possibility of (first) love, the repercussions of the loss are unbearable. The film is executed with great sensitivity and beauty, much of it set against the backdrop of rustling wind and trees in a bamboo forest.

Director Hur Jin-Ho skillfully maps out the small shifts, the ebb and flow of relationship cycles. And the conceit of telling the story from the perspective of a very sensitive young man coming to terms with family issues, professional issues and issues of the heart is poignant.

Certain poetic scenes stick in the memory, including one that's just sublime. When Sang-Woo and Eun-Sun first meet, they travel to a forest to record the sounds of wind. As they sit on the forest floor, the camera hovers above them in the treetops, swaying in the wind, observing their quiet moments. They sit motionless, listening, eyes closed. A sentimental piano score rises. It's as if nature has conspired to bring them together. Ditto their first kiss, which plays out like one of those frantic, late-evening, alcohol-woozy couplings. Finally, their climactic parting on a crowded city street captures a delicacy, ambivalence and indecision so carefully. Rarely have I seen a character in a movie so torn in one moment, between his head and heart, looking for a fleeting reason to abandon intellect in favor of one more go-round.

I was impressed with the way the film captures the beginning stages of love - the subtlety of the dance that people do around each other; the excitement of the newness of someone else. The conscious

decision to let someone else into your life; to risk. And then, almost out of nowhere and before things even really get started, the inevitable decline and withdrawal. The film doesn't offer any easy explanations for the ambivalent nature of love, or it's ability to transform us from passion to cold feet and back again. And though I'm not sure that this deliberate lack of connected dots makes for good drama, it certainly makes for realism.

There's a family subplot that's meant to be touching but for me came off telegraphed and routine, involving a widowed grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's, pining for her philandering dead husband. It's clear that Sang-Woo is meant to see romantic role models in his family. But these scenes seem overly familiar, sincere yet hokey.

On a technical level, the cinematography is gorgeous. Being a sound technician, Sang-Woo is most often on location, recording sounds and presence from nature. There are many scenes set amidst beautiful mountain vistas, gushing streams, wind-swept forests and rain-pelted city streets. And the sentimental score is just right.

I've read comparisons between this film and those of the famous Chinese filmmaker Wong Kari-Wi (Happy Together, In the Mood for Love). And though they both deal heavily with tragic affairs of the heart, Kari-Wi is a dazzling visual stylist who creates dreamy, hypnotic realities. Jim-Ho's One Fine Spring Day is much more a realist film in its approach: direct, raw and exposed.

I liked One Fine Spring Day. It felt "real" to me in its sincere and clear-eyed view of its subject matter - material usually relegated to pat treatments, happy endings and feel good, foregone conclusions. This may distinctly qualify as a "feel bad" film, but it's a damn good one nonetheless.