“Our Season”—A tender afterlife visit stirs a daughter’s grief, a mother’s recipes, and the courage to begin again
Introduction
The first time I heard the clink of bowls in this movie’s kitchen, I swear I smelled steamed rice and soy-braised anchovies—and my chest tightened the way it does when a familiar song finds you on a hard day. Have you ever wished for three more days with someone you’ve lost, not to fix everything, but to sit together while the soup simmers? Our Season invites us into that wish with a hush: a mother returns from heaven, a daughter keeps cooking to fill a silence she can’t name, and time is measured in breakfasts, bus stops, and the soft scrape of a chair on wooden floors. I watched with my own complicated memories bubbling up—pride and impatience, thank-yous said too late, recipes I still can’t quite replicate. The film doesn’t hurry; it walks at the pace of everyday life after loss, where one small kindness can feel like a rescue. And somewhere between laughter and tears, you begin to feel braver about your own unfinished conversations.
Overview
Title: Our Season (3일의 휴가)
Year: 2023
Genre: Fantasy drama, family
Main Cast: Kim Hae-sook, Shin Min-a, Kang Ki-young, Hwang Bo-ra
Runtime: 105 minutes
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Director: Yook Sang-hyo
Overall Story
A bell rings in a quiet, sunlit afterlife office, and Park Bok‑ja (Kim Hae‑sook) is called to the counter: on the third anniversary of her death, she’s granted a three‑day “vacation” to visit the living. The rules arrive briskly from a rookie guide (Kang Ki‑young): she can’t be seen or heard, she can’t touch, and she mustn’t interfere—she’s there to collect her daughter’s happy memories, not rewrite them. Bok‑ja nods like a person used to doing more with less time, but her eyes brim with a hope that looks a lot like fear. She pictures the daughter she left behind—Bang Jin‑joo (Shin Min‑a), a brilliant professor abroad—and imagines campus halls and lecture rooms humming. Then the clouds part over a different scene: the old countryside house, her house, and the signboard of a humble diner where Jin‑joo now cooks set meals, alone. You can feel Bok‑ja’s heartbeat stutter at the door she recognizes—and the life she doesn’t.
Jin‑joo runs her back‑ban diner like a ritual, recipes drawn from a battered notebook that still smells faintly of sesame oil and pencil. She greets regulars with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, then spends nights awake, measuring out the silence her mother left behind. The town knows her as “the professor who came home,” but gossip breaks on the rocks of her routine: rice, soup, two banchan, then three; wipe the counter; lock up; walk past the persimmon tree that no one prunes anymore. When her old friend Mi‑jin (Hwang Bo‑ra) pops in with breezy warmth, we see how carefully Jin‑joo keeps people at arm’s length, even the ones trying to love her. The film lets us understand without scolding: grief isn’t a wound you hide; it’s a room you keep living in, furniture and all.
Bok‑ja hovers beside the guide, heart tugging at every small habit. She watches Jin‑joo rinse rice the exact way she taught her—hand flat, circles slow, never crushing the grains—and you can see pride fighting with the ache of not being able to say, “You did good.” The guide keeps time like a metronome: three days, and then the elevator up. He’s funny and kind, but firm, reminding her that interference steals more than it gives. Still, Bok‑ja aches to understand why her scholar daughter abandoned a stable career and a glittering city to come home. She follows to the market, to the bank, to a clinic—errands that hint at insomnia, debt, and the quiet decision to endure. Somewhere in the background, a question forms: Did Jin‑joo come back for her mother, or because of her mother?
We learn the academic life abroad was real—tenured-track promises, conference badges, photos that look like someone else’s happiness. But the emails paused after the funeral, and then the flight home wasn’t a visit; it was a landing. The sociocultural texture matters here: in many Korean families, duty and tenderness are braided so tightly you can’t tell them apart, and daughters often mediate that knot through cooking, hosting, and caretaking. Jin‑joo turns the house into a diner not to make money but to keep the stove lit, to anchor days with a purpose that doesn’t demand smiling on cue. She shies away from grief counseling or family therapy, insisting she’s “fine,” the way so many of us do until the body starts saying otherwise. The movie never shouts this; it lets fatigue show up in the way she rubs her wrist after lifting pots, the way she ignores the ringing phone from overseas.
Bok‑ja tries not to break the rules, but love has always been a kind of interference. She drifts through the pantry and breathes in her spice blends, nudging Jin‑joo’s hand toward the jar labeled jang‑ajji, then stopping herself with a rueful smile. When Mi‑jin arrives with an old cassette and a promise to help repaint the signboard, the kitchen fills with laughter that turns watery at the edges; Bok‑ja stands there, visible only to us, and you feel how being a mother is a lifetime of watching your child be brave from just one step away. The guide, noticing her quiver, takes her to see the town at night: neon puddles on wet pavement, ajummas closing stalls, a bus wheezing to its last stop. “This is where she chose to be,” he says, without judgment.
Flashbacks thread through the present like steam twisting off soup. We see young Jin‑joo sullen at her mother’s insistence on “proper meals,” then older Jin‑joo warming a packed lunch in a lab microwave, the taste suddenly unbearable because it proves distance can’t conquer longing. We glimpse Bok‑ja folding a note she never gave her daughter—practical advice about rent, a joke about overcooking mackerel, a postscript about life insurance and not being too proud to ask for help. In the now, Jin‑joo quietly visits a banker about restructuring her small-business loan and an estate planning attorney about paperwork she left untouched for months, adult errands that feel heavier without someone at her shoulder. By letting us witness these mundane acts, the film honors a truth: healing is administrative as well as emotional.
A turning point arrives on a rain-day lunch rush. A traveler orders the set meal and tears up at the first spoonful—“It tastes like my mother’s house.” Jin‑joo laughs, embarrassed, and that sound loosens something inside her. Bok‑ja glows; the guide glances at the clock. Later that night, Mi‑jin confesses she’s worried: the diner is beloved but barely breaking even; maybe it’s time to apply for a new position in the city, or at least seek professional support, the kind you find when you finally type “grief counseling near me” and press send. Jin‑joo stiffens, then admits she can’t keep living in a museum of her mother. The question becomes not if she will move, but how to carry the kitchen with her, the way we carry the people we miss.
On the second night, Bok‑ja and the guide take a pilgrimage to the old schoolyard and the bus stop where Jin‑joo once waited with a piano case and a pout. Each location is a breadcrumb of a larger memory: a fight over a scholarship, a quiet reconciliation over late-night porridge when words were too heavy. The guide, amused, lets Bok‑ja bend one tiny rule: she arranges the recipe notebook open to a page marked with a grease-smudged heart. In the morning, Jin‑joo finds it, laughs through tears, and cooks the dish she’s avoided since the funeral—and the camera holds on her face as flavor pulls her through time. Nothing is haunted in that moment; everything is inhabited.
On the final day, the clock grows loud. Jin‑joo hosts a small dinner: locals, Mi‑jin, the mail carrier who leaves extra elastic bands because she likes to reuse them. She tells a story about her mother’s terrible handwriting and perfect broth, and admits, for the first time, that she came home because grief made her brilliant life feel like an empty suitcase. “I thought staying here would fix it,” she says, “but maybe fixing it means taking her with me somewhere new.” Outside, the first snow starts. Inside, Bok‑ja stands inches from her daughter, hands hovering the way you do when you want to tuck a stray hair behind an ear. Then the elevator is there, and time is up.
The farewell is wordless and full. Jin‑joo closes the diner early, leaves the light on above the stove, and steps into the snow with Mi‑jin, who links arms without asking for an explanation. Bok‑ja rises, the guide steady at her side, and for a split second she glances back. We don’t see angels or fireworks; we see a woman who did her best, making peace with the unfixable and trusting her daughter to do the same. When the credits roll, you might find yourself texting someone you love a recipe, or finally booking that first appointment you’ve been avoiding. The film’s gift is subtle but lasting: it makes the ordinary feel like exactly enough.
Highlight Scenes / Unforgettable Moments
The Rulebook at the Counter: Bok‑ja receives her three-day pass and the guide lists the rules—no touching, no speaking, no interference. The scene is played with gentle humor, but its stakes are enormous: love must become observation. Watching a mother agree to watch instead of fix sets the emotional baseline; every almost‑gesture after this—hands hovering over a shoulder, a spoon paused mid‑air—feels charged by that promise. The rulebook becomes the film’s true antagonist, and the mercy that keeps grief from turning obsessive.
The First Breakfast Back: Jin‑joo cooks for the regulars while Bok‑ja ghosts through the kitchen, noting knife grip, heat levels, the way her daughter tastes soup with the inside of her wrist like she does. Food movies often glamorize, but this sequence honors repetition: rice rinsed, pot clicked, timer set. When a customer murmurs, “This tastes like home,” Jin‑joo’s smile flickers, as if she’s afraid of what “home” will cost her. The camera lingers on the steam; the past is visible in the air above the bowl.
Mi‑jin’s Cassette: An old mix tape surfaces, setting the room afloat on a soundtrack of youthful bravado and kitchen clatter. Mi‑jin dances like they’re twenty again, and Jin‑joo lets the song warm her face before retreating. Bok‑ja sways, unseen, and for a second the three women feel like a chorus—present, past, and the friend who bridges them. It’s a reminder that friendship is often the first medicine we ignore and the last we give up on.
The Notebook Opens Itself: Late at night, the recipe book lies shut on the counter—blocked, like Jin‑joo’s grief. Bok‑ja, breaking a small rule, nudges it open to a dish the daughter can’t quite face. The next morning, Jin‑joo cooks through tears, and the taste carries the apology she never said and the gratitude she didn’t know how to voice. It’s one of those cinematic alchemies where a page turn feels like a door opening.
The Rain‑Day Rush: A traveler’s offhand compliment—“It tastes like my mother’s house”—lands like a benediction. Jin‑joo doesn’t crumble; she steadies. Outside, rain hammers the awning; inside, bowls slide across the counter with a rhythm that sounds like breathing. In a film full of whispers, this is a public moment of grace that shows community can cradle private pain.
The Snow and the Elevator: As snow begins, time runs out. The guide stands at the door; Bok‑ja stands an arm’s length from her daughter, holding every word she wants to say like a full glass she refuses to spill. No speech, no magical loophole—just the courage to leave with love instead of answers. It’s restrained, devastating, and, strangely, relieving. The movie trusts us to understand what goodbye can give.
Memorable Lines
“Just bring back her happy memories.” — the Guide, setting terms with a soft voice. It sounds simple, almost bureaucratic, until you realize what’s being asked: to look for joy in a life still mid‑storm. The instruction shapes Bok‑ja’s gaze and the film’s camera alike, turning us into seekers of small good things. It also reframes grief as curation, not erasure—choose what you carry forward.
“She can’t see you or hear you.” — the Rule that hurts more each minute. At first it plays like a cute constraint for a fantasy, but the longer we sit with it, the more it mirrors real life: how many of our best words arrive too late? The line deepens the mother’s discipline—love as self‑restraint—and explains why the kitchen’s quiet feels thunderous. It is the boundary that makes every near‑touch feel like a confession.
“It tastes like my mother’s house.” — a stranger at the counter, blessing a bowl of soup. In a film about a daughter’s stuck grief, this outside voice validates the work Jin‑joo does daily to keep warmth circulating. The sentence flips the diner from memorial to living place, nudging her toward community. It’s the kind of compliment that changes the trajectory of a week.
“I thought staying would fix it.” — Jin‑joo, finally naming her stalemate. The admission compresses months of insomnia, missed calls, and unasked-for advice into one clear truth. Saying it lets movement begin—applications drafted, calls placed, maybe even a session booked for grief counseling that lets her carry the kitchen without living in it. It’s the hinge on which the film’s hope swings.
“Three days were enough.” — not because everything is solved, but because enough can be holy. This quiet conclusion doesn’t pretend to closure; it honors endurance. It acknowledges what many of us learn after a loss: the goal isn’t to get over it, but to knit it into the life you’re still making. And that, the movie suggests, is where love keeps working.
Why It's Special
Have you ever wished for just three more days with someone you love? Our Season wraps that longing in warm light and winter air, following a mother who returns from beyond to walk beside her daughter—quietly, invisibly, and with all the tenderness she couldn’t say out loud. For readers in the United States, you can currently watch Our Season by renting on Amazon or streaming free with ads on The Roku Channel; in South Korea, it’s available on Netflix. Platform availability may change, so check before you press play, but if you’re in the mood for something soothing and sincere, this is a perfect evening choice.
The film eases you in like a familiar meal. A tidy country diner, steam lifting from bowls, a daughter stirring a soup that tastes like memory—these are the textures the camera falls in love with. The fantasy premise is gentle rather than showy: a “three‑day leave” from the afterlife, observed at a distance, where love is less about miracles than about noticing, forgiving, and feeding each other.
What makes it special is the way grief and comfort exist side by side. Our Season never wallows; it breathes. The story lets longing sit at the table with laughter, the way real families do. Have you ever felt this way—teary, then unexpectedly okay, simply because a certain smell in the kitchen brought someone back?
Direction and performance lock into a rhythm that feels lived-in. Scenes in the home and diner move with the quiet curiosity of a mother learning who her daughter has become. The guide from the afterlife adds a whimsical beat, but the film keeps its feet on the ground, choosing intimacy over spectacle so each small kindness lands with weight.
The writing draws out unspoken blame and buried gratitude without turning confessions into speeches. A few lines of dry humor, a shared recipe, a late bus—these are the moments that become turning points. Our Season balances fantasy, family drama, and what Korean audiences often call “healing” cinema, creating an emotional blend that feels restorative rather than draining.
Visually, winter becomes a character of its own: frost‑edged mornings, breath in the air, warm kitchens against the cold. You feel the hush that follows loss and the hush that precedes forgiveness. The sound design leaves space for clinking bowls and quiet footsteps, trusting you to lean in.
Even the ticking clock—the title’s three days—works like a soft metronome. It adds urgency without panic, reminding us that love is measured in how we spend ordinary minutes. By the time the final meal is served, you may find yourself reaching for your phone, drafting that text you’ve been putting off, and remembering that closure often begins with a simple hello.
Popularity & Reception
When Our Season opened in South Korea on December 6, 2023, it arrived precisely when audiences most crave reflective stories—year’s end. It wasn’t a box‑office behemoth, yet it drew steady crowds looking for something warm and honest, ultimately earning a multi‑million‑dollar run domestically. Viewers spoke of leaving theaters lighter, the way a long talk at the kitchen table can unknot your chest.
Audience word‑of‑mouth mattered. On Korea’s major portals and cinema indices, reactions skewed warmly—describing it as a tear‑stirring but comforting experience, a winter film for anyone missing someone. Those sentiments helped the movie linger in conversation even after its theatrical window closed.
The press framed it as a gentle fantasy anchored in universal feelings. Coverage highlighted how the film leans on everyday rituals—cooking, cleaning, sitting together—to express love, and how the lead performances quietly carry those moments. Interviews around release emphasized the cast’s affection for the material and the intention to make something “honest but fictional” about mothers and daughters.
Internationally, streaming gave Our Season a second life. As the film reached U.S. platforms, it became a word‑of‑mouth recommendation among fans of family dramas and K‑cinema, the kind you share in group chats with a “this made me call my mom” message. Even without a large slate of Western critic reviews, the film’s dedicated landing pages and viewers’ ratings kept discovery pathways open.
Awards chatter was modest compared to headline‑grabbing blockbusters, but that fits the movie’s soul—it’s a small, steady flame rather than a fireworks show. Within Korea’s year‑end cycle of heartfelt releases, it found a niche as the “warm bowl” of the season, sustained by audience affection over trophy counts.
Cast & Fun Facts
Kim Hae‑sook plays Bok‑ja, the mother whose return is as much about seeing as being seen. She approaches the role with the grace of someone who understands that love, after a certain age, is made of attention. Her quiet smiles, the way her hands hover over her daughter’s shoulders, the pride that softens into apology—these are notes only a seasoned actor can play without a single false vibration.
Her screen presence also carries the film’s spiritual logic. Because we experience much of the story from her silent vantage point, Kim lets small gestures do the talking, allowing the audience to “hear” what can’t be said aloud. It’s a performance that trusts subtlety, and that’s precisely why the emotions land so cleanly.
Shin Min‑a is luminous as Jin‑joo, a woman who has put success on pause and returned home to cook the food that raised her. She wears resilience like a comfortable sweater, yet you can see the seams—tired eyes, a laugh that lingers a second too long. Her Jin‑joo isn’t brittle; she’s just holding more than she lets on, and the film lets us watch that burden lighten one ladle at a time.
Shin’s choices invite the audience into the push‑pull between ambition and belonging. When she chops, stirs, and serves, you sense she’s feeding herself, too, rebuilding identity through recipes. In press conversations, she spoke about how the script’s warmth drew her in; on screen, that warmth feels lived‑in, not performed.
Kang Ki‑young plays the otherworldly guide with a bright, buoyant charm that keeps the story from tipping into melancholy. He’s the friend who nudges you to take a walk, to look up, to breathe. Every time he appears, the movie takes a half‑step toward whimsy, reminding us that love stories can be playful even when they’re about farewells.
His performance balances levity and purpose: the guide is a narrative hinge, but he’s also a mirror, reflecting the tenderness between mother and daughter back at them with a grin. That light touch is essential to the film’s “healing” tone; it keeps your heart open for the deeper notes to resonate.
Hwang Bo‑ra brings Mi‑jin, Jin‑joo’s longtime friend, to life with bracing honesty and comic timing. She’s the kind of friend who can coax a laugh out of you in the middle of a crisis, not because she avoids the hard thing, but because she stands beside you while you face it. Her scenes in the kitchen feel like a love letter to shared histories—stories told between bites.
In her second paragraph of presence, Hwang gives the film a social heartbeat—someone outside the family who sees the cracks and fills them with presence rather than platitudes. That everyday heroism, played without fuss, expands the story’s circle of care and shows how community softens grief.
Behind the camera, director Yook Sang‑hyo and screenwriter Yoo Young‑ah are a natural pairing for this material. Yook previously crafted the tender crowd‑pleaser Inseparable Bros, proof of his feel for dignified, character‑first storytelling; Yoo co‑wrote the beloved Miracle in Cell No. 7, a modern touchstone for emotionally rich Korean cinema. Together, they build a fantasy that never loses sight of real human rhythms.
A quiet “fun fact” about Our Season: despite its intimate scale, it took a long road to release. Principal photography wrapped back in early 2020, and the film finally reached Korean theaters in December 2023—another reason it feels like a time capsule of tenderness, opened when the world most needed it. Several scenes were filmed in wintry countryside locations, deepening that cocooning, back‑home vibe you feel throughout.
Conclusion / Warm Reminders
Our Season is the kind of movie that sits with you like a late‑night call to someone you miss. If it nudges you to book a flight home with those long‑ignored credit card rewards, to check on the life insurance you keep meaning to update, or to make your kitchen feel a little safer with the right home insurance, that’s only because it remembers what really matters. Let it remind you that love is built, served, and shared—one ordinary minute at a time. And when the credits roll, ask yourself: who needs to hear from me tonight?
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