DimpleJohn
United Arab Emirates
What I got, however, was a very real story of broken individuals with difficult family lives who deal with very believable and relatable situations just trying to figure things out as best they can. There is no antagonist in this piece other than life itself.
In the first half of the movie, we see Jeon Do-Yeon playing a very stoic mother of a mentally handicapped boy who we later learn seems to be the glue that is holding her marriage together. Once she is back on home ground, however, we see her in a different light as she is successfully running her family fashion line and seems more confident that she was in Finland. The moral conflict caused by the affair is more apparent in her character and she portrays the hesitation very well.
Gong Yoo’s character is one that pleasantly surprised me here. Granted I am biased with all matters Yoo, however he lost points when choosing to depict an adulterous father of a depressed child and mentally unstable wife. This role portrayed by any other actor would have come across as sleazy and stalker-ish but with him there is an innocence and vulnerability that oddly makes you root for him and the couple.
Finland itself seems to be a character in the movie as it visually depicts the isolation felt by our protagonists as well as the lack of any warmth in their current relationships. I could go on about the symbolic significance of the sauna in the woods, the hotel suites where our couple has their trist or their train ride in the second half of the movie but that would take forever.
If you are looking for a bubbly romance or are watching with boxes of tissue ready at hand, then this may not be the one for you. If however, you want to see the world from an alternative point of view or just really feel something down to your soul, then I highly recommend this movie.
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The writers of the show, I feel, should have continued to break the third wall (which is rare if not unheard of in a Kdrama) which was the main charm of the show. Instead around the second or third episode they decided to give the show the real Kdrama treatment which would have been fine if they had better writers or more money to spend on the show.
Kdramas cost a lot of money and it certainly shows with the picture quality, sets, costumes and though it may not be true of all dramas but the writing and production value of the shows.
This was not the case for this show and it would have been fine the writers realized that the main draw of the show was the meta-ness of the show and stuck to that theme throughout the show instead of making it into a real drama which it certainly isn't.
The chemistry between the lead pair is weak at best and it really gets confusing switching between reading the subs and realizing that the characters are speaking in English.
Fun venture but got too serious too soon.
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Sure they look like the actors you love but they are still honing their skills that have made them so beloved today. Either that or they were given such a weak script that they did the best they could. During the time the show came out they might not have been in a position to pick and choose the roles they liked. They also had bills to pay back in the day.
The plot when looked at by western standards is a bit gross with a teacher and student falling in love and I guess the show wanted to promote that love knows no age but I can't get my head around the relationship. It is not the age that gets to me, but the student/teacher relationship. For me a teacher is a sacred profession and is entrusted with nurturing a child's future much like a parent. Think about it, you are as much a product of your upbringing at home as you are of the education you received at school. A teacher replaces your parents during your time in school and to marry your teacher is just YUCK!
The one thing that the show has taught me is that no matter how much I may be in love with Gong Yoo I can still watch him objectively wen he is on screen With the exception of Cho Han Gul in Coffee Prince because when ever he is on screen during that show I forget to read the subtitles ;)
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What I sadly got was a bumbling idiot who rode the male lead's tail coats to solving crimes, couldn't defend herself even if her and at times other people's lives depended on it and couldn't even avenge her father's death despite the fact that this was the reason she became a cop in the first place.
I was surprised with the meaty role that Seo in Guk had bagged in this show though. I had only seem him earlier in Reply and his second male lead role in Master's Sun. The role he played in this show was no different from the one I found he played in Reply. He just traded his hat as a lawyer and became a profiler/ criminal studies professor of some sort. What I found enjoyable was that all the major players (excluding of course the female lead) were exceptionally clever people and when the three shared the screen, it was an intricate dance of intellects.
Plot wise I lost interest a little later than I do for most series and once the criminals were apprehended, the show simply moved on to the next serial murderer without tying in the loose ends that the previous case had left.
Had it not been for my rule of watching things through to the end no matter how bad the show is, I would have dropped it ages ago. This show is a good watch if you have nothing better to do on a rainy day.
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