"Ms. Perfect" is a scintillating melodrama with a classic flavour, able to offer an intricately multifaceted story that, starting from a fairly conventional family drama structure, with the end of a married couple's love affair at its centre and the relative painful disintegration of the domestic unit, gradually evolves into a fascinating and enthralling mystery thriller with an incredible story of mad love at its centre, absolutely indebted to the Hollywood classics of the golden age...

Thanks to the chance offered by a singular and apparently perfect woman, a strange rental contract (extremely favourable! ) and a forced and curious cohabitation, accompanied by a heterogeneous group of family members, friends, and real or presumed servants, the focus of the story will develop in the new home of our heroine who, faced with ambiguously hostile characters and situations, gripped by doubts, feelings of guilt (not only her husband's betrayal, but also the uncomfortable presence/figure of her ex-first love) and even erroneous evaluations, will end up feeling threatened in the actual space of her new living location...

Trying to play with cinematic genres, in order to tempt the curious, “Ms. Perfect” seems to be the evolution of the so-called 'gothic movie', in its female variant, starring a woman, in spite of herself, grappling with a marriage affair with disturbing contours. Only in this case, the danger does not come directly from the male counterpart, but from the ambiguous and perturbing co-star, a true modern adaptation of the figure of the 'dark lady', a typical characterisation of the noir genre.

Everything is prodigiously served by a writing script that is never ordinary, capable of re-launching the plot each time with courageous choices, absolutely unsettling in many cases, at the service of a cast of an extraordinary level, able to alternate between comedy and tragedy, charade and drama, in a constant involvement that accompanies us throughout the wonderful twenty episodes, which show no sign of weakness or tiredness...

Intrigues and mysteries, real or presumed ghosts that re-emerge from a past with many interrogative aspects. As in the best tradition of Korean dramas, an underlying ambiguity appears that is able to characterise all the actors of "Ms. Perfect"... No one seems to be immune from guilt, albeit on different levels, and this ambiguity allows us to escape from easy "good/bad" classifications, thanks to a great performance by the whole cast...

The main attraction of this drama rotates around the astonishing performance of the charismatic Cho Yeo Jung, an actress of incredible beauty, capable, thanks to her immense and ambiguous charm, of portraying the role of a foolish woman in love, disposed to do anything to obtain the object of her desire... Absolutely ambiguous and sinister right from the moment she appears on the scene, Eun Hee becomes the true focal point of the narrative, catalysing the attention on her character who will progressively reveal her hidden object, concretely managing to raise the attention also on the omnipresent and obsessive relationship that connects stars and their fans (stalker! ?)

Sacrificial victims of his love madness are the "rival" Jae Bok, played by the also very beautiful Ko So Young (almost a twin sister of Kim Ha Neul!) and her husband, Jung Hee, brilliantly rendered by the excellent Yoon Sang Hyun, in one of the best roles of his remarkable career... In my opinion, it is precisely through the character of Jung Hee, in his progressive personality transformation, in the clash/confrontation with his wife Jae Bok, that some of the most interesting narrative cues emerge, capable of instilling doubts above all of a moral nature, on ambition, guilt and careerism at any cost...

It was said of the overall excellent cast where also the very good Sung Joon/Bong Goo makes his character evolve in a decidedly mature manner, thanks also to the exemplary part played by Im Se Mi/Na Mi who, mainly in the first half of the drama, shows a prominent role in the unravelling of the intrigued plot... I also really appreciated Jae Bok's two funny female friends, Na Hye Ran (played by Kim Jung Nan) and, above all, Kim Won Jae (Jung Soo Young) who could even have been used in more depth, given the psychoanalytic aspect emerging in the development of the storyline.... But, again, bravo to all, adults and children alike

There are many truly fascinating passages, often concentrated inside the vast mansion; the mysterious doors forbidden to all, also a typical noir cliché, almost an update of Hitchcock's "Rebecca" or so many of its epigones; Jae Bok's continuous wandering in the house, often intimidated by the presence of "hostile" figures; the effective use of flash-backs, which, thanks also to the classic repetitions of past traumas, reveal the many dark points of the principal characters... The confrontation between Na Mi and Eun Hee, Eun Hee finding herself alone in the huge house...And then one of my favourite movie tropes: The forced closure in the asylum, as well as the literally " flaming" finale that seems taken from a Roger Corman movie of the Edgar Allan Poe series....

Managing to satisfy so many of my cinematic obsessions, with an intriguing, engaging, well-written, perfectly acted tale, without moments of boredom or the usual lapses into more or less acceptable nonsense, 'Ms. Perfect' is a 'perfectly' successful example of excellent narrative script that meets absolutely exemplary mise-en-scene, creating a very entertaining story
9/10