‘Bedford Park’ Review: Stephanie Ahn’s Cloudy New Jersey Romance Eulogizes an American Dream

A tender New Jersey romance between second-generation immigrants, Stephanie Ahn’s “Bedford Park” comes instantly alive. Sparked by the literal collision of two Korean American families, this dreamy feature debut opens on a short-tempered meet-cute that promises a precise and deeply personal love story unfolding in real time. When physical therapist Audrey (Moon Choi) arrives at her childhood home to care for her mother following a car accident, she develops an intense, slow-burn attraction to Eli (Son Suk-ku), a local security guard and the stand-offish “other” driver.

Ahn introduces the couple’s unlikely chemistry through strained carpool rides that gradually give way to intimate, disarming nights. Audrey and Eli’s at-first brief interactions are framed by poetic moments of privacy that play like naturalistic portraits: shared silences, cautious humor, looks that linger too long. Early on, there is a sense that “Bedford Park” is culturally revelatory. It’s a flashpoint depiction of American life filtered through a specificity that feels rare, romantic, and essential right now. 

Less invested in sustaining a love story than it is mapping that romance onto a recognizable community, Ahn’s film trades some of its emotional momentum for an accumulation of rich detail. After its bright beginning, this 2026 Sundance premiere overcomplicates itself to a degree, layering in extraneous characters and tonal detours that feel authentic but steadily chip away at Audrey and Eli’s connection — both with each other and the audience. Ahn’s script grows ever-more ambitious as it goes on, and that sprawl seems intentional. But in overextending her characters’ arcs and hearts, this otherwise exceptional filmmaker struggles to hold onto the core intimacy that initially makes her film feel assured.

Anchored firmly in the Garden State despite its misleading, Bronx-based title, “Bedford Park” captures distinctly East Coast textures — ironed-on familial obligation, brusk cultural shorthand, simmering lower-class resentment — to create a lived-in world that ultimately feels deeper in its symbolic meaning than the two leads’ human emotion. From transplanted Korean-American customs, to a convincingly rendered high school wrestling scene, the soulful specificity is immersive rather than ornamental. And yet, as a revolving door of background figures spins through the frame, Ahn clouds her, Audrey, and Eli’s voices, losing sight of a story that could’ve been smaller, sharper, and more affecting.

That misstep is especially frustrating because the central romance, flawed and fiery as it may be, is Ahn’s greatest strength. The pair’s early antagonism is punctuated by petty, almost sibling-like sniping, and their shared world soon emerges as a place of brutal honesty and old ghosts. The remnants of a fruit basket Audrey once hurled at Eli’s closed door clarifies a kind of bruised vulnerability between the stars. Moments of levity, including a surprisingly charming “Rocky” soundtrack sing-a-long, sketch a universe forming between people whose experience of U.S. life has long been dictated by stoicism and isolation.

As their relationship deepens, “Bedford Park” reveals a connection shaped less by idyllic fantasy than by the relief of survival. Sharing a bed, Audrey and Eli talk about lost potential and childhood abuse with an understated frankness that makes their mutual trust feel all the more earned. Here, love is not a cure-all but a process of rupture and repair centering the damage both people already carry, and Choi and Suk-ku are exquisitely matched on that front. Audrey presents like a self-protecting spider — intimidating yet delicate, crawling the fraught emotional web that circumstance has built around her with sly, hand-wringing diligence. Her performance balances restraint with sudden flashes of overwhelming emotion and even fury, effectively embodying a woman whose subtle self-abuse has calcified into habit. 

Suk-ku, by contrast, brings a regionally-appropriate directness to Eli that’s warm, welcome, and comfortably melancholy. His presence feels as protective and dangerous as a bear hug near Audrey, and when he opens up to her, the vulnerability she discovers is infectious. Eli prompts his love itnerest to extend kindness toward herself she has long withheld. But a spider and a bear, as Ahn seems to know, are poorly suited to lasting harmony, and tension bubbles beneath the surface of nearly every scene. 

As Audrey’s guard lowers, “Bedford Park” broadens its scope and further confuses her interior life as the primary protagonist. Cycles of destructive behavior (including repeated miscarriages tied to a condition she knows makes pregnancy unsafe and unlikely) gradually recede as Eli’s equally troubling past comes into focus. His ex-wife, estranged daughter, and an unnecessary criminal subplot involving his adopted brother introduce stakes that feel less illuminating and more melodramatic. While Audrey’s elderly parents are smartly drawn (particularly her father, still mourning a professional life in Korea he lost decades ago), Ahn’s flawed effort asks viewers to manage too many threads at once.  

That said, the emotional congestion could be deliberate. In the second half, Ahn introduces more supporting characters than she can care for, gesturing at a worldview in which the future — especially for immigrant families — feels crowded, precarious, and perpetually on the verge of collapse. In that reading, “Bedford Park” becomes brilliantly tragic: a romance smothered not by a lack of attraction but by the weight of real life tearing it down. As a debut feature, whether it’s confused or clever, the film announces Ahn as a true artist of intimacy and image. Framing her leads’ rain-soaked first kiss in a shot so unexpected it makes parked cars look magical, the director speaks the language of cinema with ease. 

Still, running more than two hours, “Bedford Park” hangs on too long. Trimming even twenty minutes would sharpen its emotional throughline and leave a more enduring impression. But Ahn is especially attuned to this particular moment, and transportive indie romances arrive at Sundance every year. Speaking for itself with ferocious humanity, Ahn’s work makes a strong case for indulging her instincts, even when they don’t work out. Better still, it offers companionship in uncertainty, evoking the gentle squeeze of another’s hand the moment you realize how perilous it was for either of you to get this far.

Grade: B

“Bedford Park” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

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