by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
The Rose
Intro:
… a solid band doco that sheds much-needed light on what goes on outside the K-pop bubble.
The Rose: Come Back to Me, from documentarian Eugene Yi (Free Chol Soo Lee), tells the story of the K-rock band The Rose, their come-up, successes, struggles, and navigations through the Korean music scene.
The film opens with The Rose’s performance at Coachella 2024 and then loops back around to show how they got there, from the four-piece’s origins in busking, church bands, and even training within the K-pop circuit through DSP Media and the talent show Survival Audition K-pop Star.
The shadow of K-pop looms large, from admissions of eyeing up each other’s marketability on first meeting and how K-pop as a genre paved the way, to connecting with members of BTS, to their label J&Star Company trying to isolate lead vocalist Woosung from the others (aided by salacious headlines regarding a marijuana charge that made him a pop pariah for a time). But in that, their story of independent success feels like one that needs to be told, highlighting their strains but also their abilities as a unit.
These lads are entertaining to watch. Schedules alternating between rehearsals and playing Overwatch, kawibawibo (rock paper scissors) for who gets the best room, even their recurring gratitude for finding an audience that are into their interests…
The music is pretty damn good too. The individual songs stretch across many different flavours of indie rock, building from their initial pedigree of cover songs from Bruno Mars to Jason Mraz, and the presentation, which pushes them to the next level; drawn animation punctuating the notes like an abstract version of osu!, as well as rising water symbolising bassist Taegyeom’s depression during his compulsory military service, and the entire sequence devoted to their song ‘See-Saw’ is immensely emotional. Beginning on a single guitar with just the four of them, to a teary-eyed live performance, to the band recalling the fans’ own love for the tracks, it shows a connection between artist and audience (and even the viewer) that goes beyond the histrionics associated with ‘stan’ culture. It is every bit as genuine and raw as the band playing it and shows how much of themselves that they put into this endeavour.
The Rose: Come Back to Me is a solid band doco that sheds much-needed light on what goes on outside the K-pop bubble. The band’s story is equal parts enlightening (the band’s treatment of concerts as ‘busking but bigger’) and surprising (of all the places to hear ‘Like A G6’…), the tunes keep the heads nodding, and it manages to stick to the important parts without feeling like it’s being rushed through or that actual discomfort landed on the cutting room floor.
Here’s one for the Black Roses and those who, after likely getting ‘Sorry’ stuck in their head from watching this, might just become Black Roses themselves.
