This review may contain spoilers
A Somber Love Story Hinging on Desperation
Shelter.A place to be.
A roof.
A resting place.
A place to–what?
Shelter. What exactly is it? And why is it so hard to hold onto? Why is it so hard to define? Why is it so hard to understand?
Starring Lee Jae Bin as Lee Yoon Dae and Jang Woo Young as Cha Soo Hyuk, the Korean BL Gray Shelter is all about finding a haven amidst life’s storm, amidst domestic violence and emotional abuse. Yoon Dae is a domestic abuse victim who learned to avoid anger by becoming angry at himself and others, all while fearing being alone. Soo Hyuk is trying desperately to survive while supporting a family whose income is being sucked dry by his gambling-addict father.
And both are looking for the one thing neither has ever truly known.
Read the complete article here-
https://the-bl-xpress.com/2024/04/26/gray-shelter-series-review-ep-3-to-5/
Was this review helpful to you?
Alright...
A lot of lack of communication: on this I can sum up this drama. They barely told how they feel and think of each others letting all linger between them. A great idea that didn't deliver, at least in my point of view. The dark tone was good, the ost was nice, but the story and the abrupt ending lacked the essence. So much to be said still...The ending felt rushed as well. I will take it as their new well start, or if we go with the routine, depart.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
THE ANGST!!
The acting was great! The chemistry between the two actors as ridiculous and I wanted more! The title credits and song are probably the best I’ve seen in a KBL and perfectly capture the mood of the show. I was just a little confused. I don’t know if it was the translation or the script, but I feel like I missed a lot. Like I understood the conflict between the leads and both of their dads. I thought the one dad was in jail, but he sent the oranges (or apples) from not jail….? I also thought the abusive dad was going to show up again but he didn’t, and that was disappointing because I think there needed to be that closure, more than the phone call provided. Would watch again though!Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Beautiful Art House Mini-Series
I love the angst and ambiguity of this mini-series. The directing and editing choices are so fascinating. It’s very indie arthouse, aimed at a niche audience rather than typical BL fans. At first the messy jump transitions that skipped randomly through time and space felt like a mistake, but as it proceeded I realized that this is an emotion/character-driven series, and not at all focused on a plot line. The broken movement and unsettling feeling of being jerked throughout the story are definitely intentional.This little art piece is about two broken men who have come from painfully unstable situations. Soon Hyuk tries to fight the chaos by assuming the role of caretaker for everyone around him, grinding himself into the ground with the burden of responsibility. Yoon Dae succumbs to the chaos by shutting down and becoming dysfunctional so that everyone has to care for him.
The men are drawn to each other by a strong sexual attraction and even stronger need for a stable family. But neither of them have a template for a stable relationship.
SPOILER⚠️
In the end, Soon Hyuk realizes that Yoon Dae has to be independent of his ambiguous (gray) “shelter” before they can even begin to develop a healthy relationship.
I think the cryptic ending will piss off some people, but I LOVE it. It’s perfect. Not only is it realistic and mature, but it leaves the series open for extension (or imagination). I adore that. A tight ending wouldn’t have fit the mood of the series at all.
Was this review helpful to you?
Story and OST are perfect for each other!
The story is really beautiful, it's dark but with a fine undertone of hope. The actors did really great and my heart ached for them. The way they interacted with each other was so careful, in a scared way, and the kiss showed their attraction to each other and their fears at the same time.The colors were muted, it really felt gray, like a heavy blanket for your emotions. Beautiful!
The OST is perfect! I often skip the intro and outro, but not this time. It reminds me of my fav anime "NANA", it has the same underlying feeling of hurt and lonelyness, but with a powerful beat.
If you like more mature, dark and serious stories, you should watch it!
I read in the comments that a second part is possible, so maybe we get to learn more about their story. I would really like to see more of those two broken people, how they maybe get a "happily ever after" or even a "both starting to heal". That would be enough for me.
Was this review helpful to you?
beautiful, reflective series
I love this series. It's so beautiful and well-acted. I really appreciate its exploration of how trauma impacts us and the devastation that is present when realize we have to change and grow. Just tears-in-my-eyes love and appreciation for the team who brought this series to life. I saw so much of my own journey and growth in both Soohyuk and Yoondae.Was this review helpful to you?
Passion by pinkpantheress
gray shelter is like that warm embrace that you receive from someone that you love and meet after a long time far from you, it's like the song passion of pinkpantheress, its like a loona mv solo, it's like seeing the sun down drinking a good tea with bread, it's like those moments that you live and instantly know that will turn into a good memory, the whole story was well constructed and everything is so good that you feel comfortable in every minute while watching. I really want to say that I was so happy to watch something so good like that in years, the """sad"""" part is that there’s only 5 eps, but I can guarantee if you are reading this and haven’t watched yet that you will watch something so good that can relieve your heart. The story, the actors, the delivering, the soundtrack, everything is perfect! the whole scenes of the past side by side with the present and all the narative... is really good, I wish to see more and more dramas like this from Korea.Was this review helpful to you?
bom mas faltou algo
eu acho meio complicado falar de grey shelter no momento. eu não acho que classificar como um potencial desperdiçado seja certo mas é meio óbvio que algumas peças faltaram se encaixar. eu vejo que na história existe um drama muito grande que cerca os personagens principais, mas esse enredo parace ser diminuído na obra. eu entendo que ficar explicando background de história as vezes se torna algo maçante, mas quando não se tem nada deixa a história vazia. os personagens tinha uma boa química, uma boa história na mão e todo um cenário/produção muito bom a disposição, uma pena que não foi aproveitado como poderia.Was this review helpful to you?
Ah the melancholia was just perfect
A very realistic ending for such a situation. And the open ending was just perfect. It gives us a little teasing feeling by telling is that ah they're not stable yet but stable enough to have a meal together. Such a melancholic vibe was honestly a breath of fresh air after seeing all that love conquers all ending we get a lot now a days in all kinds of dramas. Maybe Rewatchable...Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Poetry lost in translation
It certainly needs a better, brand new English translation to allow non-Korean speakers to re-translate it from English into their own languages. I can't believe the current translation is a faithful one, because that means the original script wouldn't make much sense and logic. In English, the back-and-forth dialogues show too much nonsense. IMHO, it is unlikely that director and screenwriter Lee Son Eum would have liked it this way, not a chance... unless there is still too much inexperience, naivety or lack of skills, but I wanna hope not.Seriously, whoever produced this mini-series needs a new translator, I beg of you! Otherwise, you are missing on a good distribution and reaching the real intended target.
Although the poverty of lines is clearly on purpose, to be honest and objective, setting aside the bad
translation, here and there there are indeed some tiny holes in the script, to the extent that you might feel confused, for example, the staging (the mise en scène) lacks something.
Another fault I perceived is the editing, which is not very clear and, again, a bit confusing: the viewer fights to get the moment in which a particular event is taking place and the general timeline of the events. When you miss that, you kinda fail to grasp the story that wants to be told, not so good, is it? We are not in Christopher Nolan's Inception, right?
Such a shame, because, otherwise, it would be one of the best korean BL (finally NOT-BL!) series I have ever watched!
That said, I loved it!
Minimalist, hermetic, realistic, mature, intense, absolutely original and out of the chorus!
Zero clichè, zero cheap and cheesy scenes, no more cringe and unrealistic stuff that wants to trigger viewers' emotions but looks ridiculous rather than romantic.
You can definitely see a production trying to pursue its artistic style instead of luring the audience with fan service gifts or marketing expectations. BRAVI!
And so, we have fine characters, both main and supporters: real people, full of flaws, sinners but not monsters, often selfish, childish and opportunist, but also caring and capable of self-denial, sacrifice, devotion. And it concerns both sons and parents. We are finally out of stereotypical gay characters, we just watch true boys with their friends and families.
Yoon Dae's devotion and desperate love request after a life of abuse are poignant, while his perseverance in making his voice heard is admirable. He seems to be a slacker, taking advantage of other people's kindness, but deep down he is also struggling to regain a sense of belonging. He screams that he wants to love and be loved, he still believes, even throwing a tantrum, but then he endures and waits.
His sweetness in stealing kisses from Soo Hyuk shows us his most vulnerable side, almost pitiful: "Leave me tomorrow, but tonight, please, just pretend and let me have one last gift: let the warmth of your lips be my last memory of you".
There is such a sorrow in this behavior that your heart is tightened, you feel his resignation in accepting that he must live alone, but at the same time your heart is filled with love by the force of his desire. So passionate, so beautiful.
You can feel the same from Soo Hyuk: watching him carrying alone the burden of his family's failures is excruciating and yet his determination to survive and not to give up, despite fatigue and sacrifice, shows strength and courage. He has always behaved as a trustworthy adult without being able though to express his feelings and desires, to the point where he is no longer capable of dreaming for a better future. We can sense he feels guilty about abandoning Yoon Dae years before; we feel his sense of duty and how much he wants to make it up to Yoon Dae. We can also guess he has always had feelings for Yoon Dae, conflicted intense feelings that frighten him. He is exhausted from being the reliable guy, always taking care of others, he can't bear it anymore. Now he needs help, someone to rely on, someone who takes care of him; he would need Yoon Dae to man up and become the adult and so he is tempted to run away again, to put distance between the two of them.
But then he stops and waits.
In different forms, they’re both fighters.
In the series there are incredible gloomy atmospheres that deliver the characters' feelings and moods, full of pain and sadness, filled with desire or rage too often suppressed. That kind of desire and anger daring to explode and surface only when there is an intimacy you finally succeeded in building with another human being you feel connected to.
That is why they easily end up hurting each other.
You can spot the exclusivity of their relationship when they confront themselves and show their true selves only to each other.
Nice choice in picking closed and confined spaces, soft lights and dull colors to portray not only the sense of no-way-out of the two leads but also the attachment, their bond and their intimacy, whispered, in total contraddiction with outdoor or open spaces, noisy and always full of light, where the both of them face their own, somehow abusing, parents. The open place, the rest of the world, is dangerous. The closed one, the two of them, is the safe zone, indeed the shelter; no more the cage that previously locked them up and isolated them. Loneliness creates anxiety though, so Yoon Dae refuses or struggles to live that solitude in places he wants to call home, places he will eventually realize he wants to live with Soo Hyuk.
Beautiful photography, pure and clean use of the film camera, nice close-up shots: essential, rough, but also touching and emotional. Good acting performances.
The beauty of this work lies in the unsaid, the unspoken, the untold. You get its poetry through the lack of explicit scenes and lines, which creates a very strong tension in the viewers who crave developments in the plot and focus on every detail in order to follow the story. This leads them to imagine the unseen, to create by themselves the love story line that eventually, despite everything, brings to a very happy ending. The light at the end of the tunnel.
I found this to be a very powerful narrative style.
The series starts with "I reject and resent you but I love you, I want you and chase you" on one character, while the other goes with "I care about you, I help you, I love you but I have to run away from you and everyone else".
Immaturity and emotional openness versus maturity and emotional block. Two mates under the relentless effect of attractive and repulsive forces, even after a long time.
And yet, despite the absence of words, the protagonists' mutual tenderness and love are revealed by their taking care of each other’s shoes, which symbolizes so much: I cherish and keep my love for you for years only to myself, because I am too scared to believe in love. Because I don't dare to show you anything, because I can't deal with you and put myself on the line, because I can't be brave enough to hope for anything... until I do, we both do.
Wonderful, disruptive, romantic message.
However, the ultimate content I found is: "We can support and help each other, but that doesn't mean we genuinely love each other or that we are ready to commit, so what's the difference between LOVE and NEED?
I must test myself, find my own path, complete my coming of age and understand that I don't love you because I need you, but I do need you because I love you.
So, once we get this naked truth, do we really need to take our separate ways in order to love each other dearly?
Can't we just simply have dinner together?"
And taking a leap of faith, while resolving yourself, your answer becomes: "Yes, please, do wait for me, let's have dinner together, shall we?".
Home.
The OST is amazing, no kitsch melodies and rhymes: strong opening and ending songs. On the various, all the instrumental themes edited are wisely dosed and therefore suggestive, powerful and
impressive. It felt like glimpsing a mix of familiar sounds from Coldplay, Radiohead and David Bowie.
In the end, when Yoon Dae says to Soo Hyuk - "Don't call me. You seldom call my name." - tell me, please, who didn't suddenly think they were somehow quoting "Call me by your name"? I certainly did. ;)
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Too confusing with almost zero infos
All I can say is that I'm too confused with everything. I tried to understand what happened in the past. Cha Soo Hyuk's father was abusive to his mother and on the first chance he took her away to hide her? Then his mother found another man and that man had a son, Lee Yoon Dae, and they lived all together for some time but then they ended things between them? And why did the son not follow his father? We get no detail over Lee Yoon Dae past life. As it seems he felt Cha Soo Hyuk as his new family, his home, his safe space. That's why he was coming back. And Cha Soo Hyuk was always worried and tried to support him in each way. While he himself trapped in a mindset of "i have to take care of my broken family" when none of these should've been his concerns. And in the end what was that? What I got is that Lee Yoon Dae finally stood on his own feet to prove that he's worthy of Cha Soo Hyuk's time and feelings. That he found his way of living and faced real life without standing still anymore.Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Very good, but missing that something...
I rarely write reviews, but I just feel like this is one of those dramas where I need to express my opinion in one long post, so here I am!! I'll write this review in sections so it doesn't end up all over the place...1. Story
The story was a very interesting one in my opinion. However, there's one thing that bothers me the most about it, and that is how hollow it ended up... They tried to make it deep and emotional, but with only 5 episodes, they failed. They had no time to show us everything they wanted to and I feel like it would've been so much better and deeper if they added at least 2 episodes!
That's the biggest flaw of this series, trying to achieve the depth it didn't have time to achieve.
2. Acting & Cast
If one thing was absolutely perfect here, then it's the acting!
The actors portrayed their characters with perfect facial expressions, voice tones, actions, and everything that goes along. It felt so natural and raw that I couldn't help but want more of it...
Whoever did the casting, THANK YOU!
3. Romance
The romance here is yet another factor that was affected by the fast pace of the show as well as YoonDae's and SooHyuk's relationship... It came so suddenly and didn't feel real at all... It even felt forced due to the characters not having enough time to form a romantic relationship. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see romantic feelings for the other in either of them.
4. Ending & Overall
Despite my mostly negative review, I enjoyed this series a lot!
I liked how realistic and serious it was, along with the stepbrothers' storyline which almost always ends up tragically...
As for the ending, I know it's supposed to be an open one, but it's also one of the reasons I wish we got a few more episodes. It just felt rushed and I didn't feel like any of the problems with their parents actually got resolved....
5. Conclusion
For me, it's a strong 8/10. However, if it had more episodes to deepen the story, I would've surely rated it much higher!
Was this review helpful to you?
