General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Daisy (데이지) (2006 film)

Daisy (데이지) is a 2006 romantic action film directed by the Hong Kong filmmaker Andrew Lau (유위강), a South Korea–Hong Kong–Netherlands co-production starring Jeon Ji-hyun (Gianna Jun), Jung Woo-sung, and Lee Sung-jae. Set in Amsterdam, it follows a love triangle between a Korean street painter, an undercover Interpol agent, and a hitman, and was the first Korean film to be shot entirely on location in the Netherlands.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	March 9, 2006 (South Korea); April 13, 2006 (Hong Kong)³
Director	Andrew Lau Wai-keung (유위강), co-director of the Infernal Affairs films¹^•⁴
Cast	Jeon Ji-hyun (Hye-young), Jung Woo-sung (Park Yi), Lee Sung-jae (Jeong-woo)⁵
Screenplay	Kwak Jae-yong, with adaptation by Ma Dai-yun and, on the Hong Kong side, Jin Ka-shang and Chang Man-keung³
Production	Shot in the Netherlands, May 12 to June 29, 2005, 36 shooting days over two months³
Runtime and rating	110 minutes; rated 15 and over in South Korea¹
Korean box office	About 1.1 million admissions per KoBiz; KOFIC records 911,277 admissions and $4,185,968 gross on 299 screens³^•¹

Spoilers

Plot

Hye-young (Jeon Ji-hyun) is a young Korean painter living in Amsterdam who tends her grandfather's antique shop on weekdays and paints portraits of passersby in the square on weekends, hoping one day to hold a real exhibition in a real gallery.¹^•⁵ After she once fell crossing a narrow log over a channel and lost her art bag, an unseen admirer replaced the log with a bridge and hung the bag on it; from then on, a pot of daisies is delivered to her every day at 4:15 in the afternoon.⁶

Two men orbit her. Park Yi (Jung Woo-sung) is a professional hitman who fell in love with her when he saw her painting in the countryside, but stays in the shadows because his work could put her in danger, expressing himself only through the daily flowers.⁵^•⁶ Jeong-woo (Lee Sung-jae) is an Interpol agent tracking a drug ring in the Netherlands; he sits for a portrait at her square stall while surveying the crowd for suspects, and Hye-young mistakes him for her secret admirer.⁶^•⁷ He plays along because it serves his assignment, and the two fall in love.⁸ The crisis arrives when Park Yi is delivered Jeong-woo's photograph as an assassination target, forcing the two rivals into a showdown that also reveals Hye-young's hidden past.⁷^•¹

In the latter part of the film Hye-young is shot and loses her voice entirely, and the dialogue throughout is extremely restrained, carried instead by the Dutch landscapes and a closely matched musical score.⁹ The film explains that in flower language the daisy suggests a hidden love.¹⁰

Production

An international shoot. Daisy was produced by iHQ and Basic Pictures, with Barking Dog Films handling local production in the Netherlands; investors included I Love Cinema, the IMM Image Contents Fund, and Surprises, Ltd.³ Andrew Lau served as both director and cinematographer alongside Ng Man-ching, and the crew included the action director Dion Lam, production designer Lai Chiu-hung, and the Japanese composer Shigeru Umebayashi, who wrote the score.³^•⁵ The screenplay was written by Kwak Jae-yong, director of My Sassy Girl, with adaptation credits split between the Korean and Hong Kong sides of the production.³^•¹¹

Filming ran from May 12 to June 29, 2005, a total of 36 shooting days over roughly two months, entirely on location in the Netherlands.³ Korean press noted that it was the first Korean film to location-shoot in the Netherlands, and that Lau alternated between wide shots showing whole Amsterdam streets and full-frame close-ups to hold the viewer through the story.² AsianWiki lists the production budget at US$10 million.⁵

Release and box office

Daisy opened in South Korea on March 9, 2006, and in Hong Kong on April 13.³ It was scheduled for release in nine Asian countries, including Japan, China, and India.⁹ Korean box-office figures differ by database: KoBiz's co-production case study records about 1.1 million admissions nationwide, Cine21 lists 1,023,096 admissions, and the KOFIC database records 911,277 admissions and a total gross of $4,185,968 on 299 screens.³^•¹²^•¹ Korean trade press expected strong competition from other March 2006 releases such as Bewitching Attraction, The Romance, and Almost Love.¹³

The film circulated widely on the festival circuit: it screened in the World Competition at the 2006 Montreal World Film Festival, and later at the Cleveland, St. Louis, and Santa Barbara international festivals and the Osian's-Cinefan festival of Asian and Arab cinema in 2007, winning the Audience Award at the 2007 Verona Film Festival (Schermi d'Amore).¹

Remake rights and reception

Before the Korean release, the Hollywood production company Gold Circle, which produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding, signed a contract for the remake rights after watching the film at the European Film Market in Berlin; the same company had already bought Jeon's earlier film Il Mare, remade as The Lake House.¹³

The director's cut. The theatrical version was widely judged rushed; DVD Talk's review called the Korean theatrical cut sloppy and crowded, but found that Lau's director's cut, nearly half an hour longer and with a restructured opening and an altered finale, "not only works, but works wonders."⁴ A Dutch reviewer on ScreenAnarchy described substantial differences between the two versions, with scenes unique to each and the story order shuffled: the cinema version plays as an action romance, while the director's cut is closer to an unapologetic tearjerker with occasional action.¹⁴ Common critical verdicts at the time praised the visuals and the Amsterdam locations while faulting the script; the JoongAng Daily wrote that the film's gunfire scenes set against Amsterdam's Gothic architecture make it seem more than a typical gangster film, though its plot starts out overtly clichéd.¹⁰^•¹⁴ On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.4/10 from about 7,000 users.¹⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026