Penshion: Koi wa Momoiro (2020)

Can a drama be Zen?

It would be hard to argue that nothing happens in this short Jdrama: there's a fist fight, a cleaver attack, a death and multiple people cheating on their relationships. But the tone of the series frames all of these events as rather small ripples in a pond.

The drama mostly centers on Shiro (Lily Franky) who is the middle-aged owner of a small pension or bed & breakfast, essentially. He's a bit prurient, but he's also open and accepting, and so he welcomes people into his life and home without judgment which provides space for them to find themselves.

The story is reminiscent of the Zen koan Is That So (https://ashidakim.com/zenkoans/3isthatso.html), and raises the question of whether a drama can or should be Zen since the acceptance of the world as it is and living in the moment is kind of antithetical to the dramatic tension that most people look for in a good drama.

Special mention should be made of Sairi Ito's performance as Shiro's daughter Haru. The climax of the series focusses almost exclusively on her reactions, and she nails it.

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Total waste of film

When I reviewed "Arimura Kasumi no Satsukyu" I wrote that they had managed to touch some deep issues, all while "giving the superficial impression that nothing's really going on".
Unfortunately, in this "Penshion: Koi wa Momoiro", they don't just *give the impression* that nothing's going on....the problem is indeed that nothing's going on, period! (ok, *almost* nothing...but honestly, the little that actually happens could've barely filled a 5' short - so little it is!)
Adding insult to injury, the dialogues are as unappealing and bland as they come (like a conversation between dumb, shallow people who actually have nothing to say - sorry to be so blunt, but that's the way it felt!) and the characters horribly undeveloped.
Total waste of film and time.

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