by Douglas Messerli
Gustavo Kawashita and Allan Seehausen (screenplay), Gustavo Kawashita and
Thais Lima (directors) One Last Order / 2019 [17 minutes]
Every day Jongin (Kyungseon Yoo) dines in the same coffee house, staying
on for a while to study. Every day, as well, anonymous short letters appear on
his tray, and finally Jongin attempts to solve the riddle as to who his secret
admirer might be.
I wish I could share the
enthusiasm of the directors and writers of this short and quite insubstantial
work, but it seems obvious from the beginning. And apparently, at least at
first, it appears that Jongin doesn’t care whether or not his admirer is a male
or female, which takes some of the energy away from this supposed gay comedy.
The messages appear to usually
come in the form of a short haiku-like poem, the first, for example, reading:
The most beautiful,
most heartwarming
most comfortable
the most loving
shape
that humans can
make.
The smiling you,
the gazing me.
We’re both happy.
Is it the male barista, Kyungsoo
(Minki Shim). He thinks he saw him reading, but “was it a mangwha or a
magazine?”
You get the idea. Most of the
film is taken up with the quite pointless search, Jongin later wondering
whether, in fact, it might be the bossy barista (Seulgi Lee). But since he has
saved all of his previous messages, he finally takes them out and attempts to
analyze their contents, writing
in his notebook: “Things I know about the secret admirer.”
The first barista, who
notices the returned messages, insists that he not give up, arguing that the
person that sent him the messages, “didn’t give up.”
Does she know who wrote the
messages, asks Jongin, going further by wondering aloud if she herself wrote
the short poems. “It wasn’t me,” she admits, “It’s someone you already know.
Just think about it a little.”
He looks over to see Kyungsoo
reading a book. And suddenly all the “subtle” moments (which, I’d argue, were
not very subtle) of the film regards his encounters with the male barista comes
back to him, the few seconds longer than usual in Kyungsoo which he holds onto
the credit card while it remains in Jongin’s grasp, the friendly smiles, the
little glances the male barista keeps making towards the student.
Jongin quickly writes a
response on one of the post-it papers and tells the first female barista to
give it to the writer. The message reads, “Can we meet tomorrow?”
Yet as the movie moves into its final frames we see Kyungsoo waiting, long after the time Jongin usually arrives. He checks the time, serves a last customer, and cleans up after her. The two other female baristas announce they are leaving a bit early for “a girl’s night out party,” asking Kyungsoo if he can clean up and close the place up.
Finally, as Kyungsoo is in the
final stages of closing, we see feet walking down the staircase of the below
ground café. You guessed it. It’s Jongin requesting “one last order.”
This South Korean shortie is
close to being an Asian boylove film, and has all of the genre’s oversweet
cuteness. So saccharin is this cinematic cinnamon bon-bon that it might as well
be served along with the coffee.
Los Angeles, August 20, 2025 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August
2025).
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