The anguish of injustice
The series tells the story of a woman named Ye Sibei who has long since lost her sparkle. Her passivity and inability to say no to others have transformed her once promising life into an existence that merely drifts through the days. We enter the story at the peak of this, where people take advantage of her in almost every facet of her daily life, whether at work with colleagues who delegate tasks to her or in her family, favoring her younger brother. This lack of assertiveness on her part ends up ruining her marriage, with her husband tired of trying to share his life with someone who merely exists.Until one day, something happens. After a work dinner where she was encouraged to drink excessively, she ends up being sexually assaulted by someone whose identity is still unknown.
From this point, the story the series wanted to tell begins...
Look, this is definitely a sensitive topic. However, while it's delicate to address, it's also very common in modern society. Not only the crime itself, but the entire process that follows it, with the difficulty of reporting it, stemming from fear, guilt, and societal judgment. And it is in these issues that the show is most robust.
It explores various situations, the different ways people react in these situations, ranging from those who prefer to simply forget and not let anyone else know, to unconditional support, sensationalist media, and finally, people's selfishness. It is in the most difficult situations that the true nature of individuals flourishes.
Yes, despite being a distressing story, with the audience watching varying their feelings from wanting to hug Ye Sibei to punching many other characters, this series is above all about empathy. About how being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes can transform the way you think and consequently how relationships unfold from then on.
Truly, without a doubt, an excellent series with a cohesive and sensitive script and direction that only strengthened the great performances of the protagonists, Mao Xiaotong and Zhang Binbin (incredible in the role of the husband. Has there ever been a better one in a series?).
At first, it may seem difficult to watch, but it's worth it. After all, the best is always yet to come.
oh yeah, big F. to ChuChu!
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This review may contain spoilers
Fighting with HERself
"Her" tells the story of Liu Yan, abandoned by her mother as a child and who literally struggles to survive the conditions she was placed in from a young age until she became an adult. From a boxer with little success, mainly due to the mischief of others, her life begins to change when she receives information about her "missing" mother, embarking on a journey of self-discovery, acceptance, love, and overcoming.What I really liked about this series was the main character. Strong on the outside and fragile on the inside, she gradually opens up and allows different people into her life, even though through these relationships, many of her weaknesses end up being highlighted, especially the trauma of fear of abandonment she has due to her mother. This trauma shapes much of her personality, preventing the development of close and healthy relationships with those around her.
See, she's not mean or treats others badly (sometimes) because she wants, but rather because of the distorted sense of love she developed with her mother, a gambling addict. The way their relationship is portrayed in the series is quite realistic, reflecting the manipulative, sociopathic nature of a person with a gambling disorder, with family members suffering the most.
Another crucial character is Lu Tianchi, the "lawyer." A sort of "good" Saul Goodman, Lu is an older man who initially helps Liu Yan find her mother and everything else she needs. From this point on, their relationship gradually seems to be moving toward something more.
The story is told quite dynamically for the most part, becoming a bit sluggish during the episodes surrounding Liu Yan's mother's official return, which ends up being quite detrimental to the overall series, as this was perhaps the story's greatest aspect and expectation.
The place where they live (is it a country?) is also very little explored. It seems like a made-up place, filmed in Macau (notable for its plaques and tombs with Portuguese writing), but nothing made much sense or felt necessary to invent a location.
The highlight of the series is definitely the restaurant's dynamic and her rise as a chef, while in parallel her social life also improved, especially strengthening her relationship with Tianchi, her brother and the restaurant's boss.
All of her friend's Tang stories are completely unnecessary, with the last one being a complete waste of time while dealing with a very serious topic.
In the end, I found "the event" a bit exaggerated. It seemed more shock value than an organic result of everything unfolding in the series. The final black-and-white episode made me question for a long time whether it was really happening or a dream, until almost halfway through the episode, the tragedy of the previous episode was confirmed and the whole journey of overcoming that she had to go through, and was going through, in the last part of the last episode, leaving that taste that life will go on, fighting and eating when she is at rock bottom.
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70% is great, the rest is a slippery slope.
Okay, let's get this straight: this is a great drama. It starts off with an interesting setting, a main character played by the always excellent Qin Hao, and a story of murder, prison system, and the eventual escape from prison.With these characteristics, I'm always in. And I stayed in, at least up to a certain point, when what could have become an excellent series slipped into disappointment, both in comparison to other series that address similar themes (Prison Break and Rectify) and in comparison to what it had delivered in previous episodes.
A complete waste after the time jump and the discovery of the real killer. Mind you, I liked the way it was revealed, in a simple and almost "occasional" way. For me, it brought a good aspect of realism. But it lost strength because we saw practically nothing of Wen Guo's life up to this point, we couldn't feel almost anything of his suffering.
We need to see a little of that, even if it was a montage of a few minutes with the years passing by and him living in hiding and having to accept all kinds of jobs to support himself. He just reappears, with a plan that isn't very clear and gives up as quickly as the passage of time was shown to us. This was the moment that should have followed a "Rectify" style, about the difficulty of reintegrating into society and the traumas carried by an ex-convict of a media crime.
Anyway, I won't even go into the plot of the wife at the end, which is completely insane and absurd.
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Such a Gaslight love
What initially seemed like a beautiful love story between two young people who were still trying to find their place in the world, is becoming more and more a realistic demonstration of what a toxic relationship can do to the other. My God, what a bad person the female protagonist is.Episode after episode, she sucks all and any vitality out of the male protagonist. From a dreamy and fun boy, all that's left is melancholy from such an uneven and selfish relationship.
Of course, he's not perfect, far from it. But many, if not all, of the problems stem from her need to control him and dictate what he should want, when he wants it and how he wants it. Hell, she even manages to find a way to blame him for the fact that her mother is horrible.
Here at home, the only thing we could hope for was that for the love of God, he wouldn't end up with her in the end.
But even though it's terrible to watch her destroy everything he wanted to be, the show is great, very well filmed (especially the first half), and demonstrates in a very raw way how the concrete jungle of the big city and the adult world can destroy dreams, relationships and, consequently, mold us into people very different from who we imagined we would be.
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