Wonderland of Love 2023

An archaeologist named Bai Li sets out on a desert expedition, all the while staying connected to her young daughter Bai Jia through frequent video calls. At home, Jeong-in, a flight attendant, chats with her boyfriend Tae-joo, who is an astronaut, and the two flow between everyday life and the long-distance pull of space. Both Bai Li’s family and Jeong-in are subscribers of Wonderland, an artificial intelligence system that lets people talk to their departed loved ones via simulated video calls. When Tae-joo awakens from a coma, Jeong-in brings the real him back home, stirring a mix of relief, complexity, and new questions about what is real and what is recreated.

Hae-ri, a Wonderland manager, spends her days fielding calls from her parents who tease her about her relationship with her junior, Hyeon-soo. The two staff members handle delicate cases within Wonderland: a grandmother being exploited by a dead grandson who appears in the system, and Yong-sik, a dying man who Hyeon-soo suspects might be his biological father. These dramas reveal the intimate and sometimes troubling ways people use the service to process grief, memory, and longing.

Back at Bai Li’s world, her mother Hwa-ran contemplates ending the Wonderland service altogether and telling her granddaughter that Li has passed away. Meanwhile, Jeong-in grows uneasy with how Tae-joo has changed since waking and begins to lean more on the Wonderland version of him. Complications erupt when Tae-joo is suspected of starting a fire in their apartment building, deepening Jeong-in’s frustration and pushing her further toward the digital double she can call up through Wonderland. A tense moment at the gate sees Tae-joo learning of Jeong-in’s Wonderland subscription, and he bids her a painful, emotional goodbye.

At the airport, the search for Jia begins to falter as Hwa-ran loses track of the girl, and Wonderland service is temporarily deactivated while staff race to locate her. Inside Wonderland, Bai Li attempts to step outside the constraints of the program to help find her daughter, but she is blocked by a series of barriers. Undeterred, she forges ahead through a sandstorm, approaching the central operating system and triggering glitches that ripple through other simulacra. Hae-ri and Hyeon-soo scramble to halt her, while Sung-joon is called in to grant Bai Li access to the central server.

The turning point comes when Sung-joon allows Bai Li to move onto the airport’s network, and she calls on Wonderland subscribers to lend their help in finding Jia. In a separate arc, Tae-joo rescues Jia, and the girl comes to terms with the truth of her mother’s death. Jeong-in, for her part, reveals the reason she joined Wonderland in the first place, and afterward chooses to deactivate her service, leading to a heartfelt reconciliation with Tae-joo. The film closes with a quiet, reflective note as the epilogue reveals Hyeon-soo guiding his mother to meet the Wonderland version of Yong-sik, illustrating how memory and mourning persist within the digital landscape.

Through these interwoven stories, the narrative examines how people cope with loss, longing, and the tension between the tangible world and its virtual reflections. Wonderland emerges not merely as a tool for connection, but as a landscape where grief can be explored, confronted, and reinterpreted, sometimes offering comfort and sometimes surfacing new questions about what it means to love, to remember, and to let go. The film maintains a steady, observant tempo, inviting viewers to reflect on the costs and comforts of digitally mediated bonds while following Bai Li’s determined pursuit to reunite with her daughter, Jeong-in’s awakening to her own needs, and the fragile, enduring links that tie families together across both real and simulated realms.