This review may contain spoilers
O BAND-AID ARRANCADO EM FORMA DE DRAMA
Assistir esse k-drama é como arrancar um bandaid de uma ferida;cada momento, desde o primeiro capitulo até o último você sente aquele bandaid sendo arrancado sem delicadeza. Cada momento, cada passagem de tempo, cada suspiro dos personagens é como se fosse o nosso. Se a Vida Te Der Tangerinas é sobre vida, sobre perdas, sobre amor, familia, amizade. Você chora e aprende com eles, você vê neles a sua própria vida passar. Um sentimento próximo foi quando eu ouvi o albúm DTMF do Bad Bunny, eu chorei porque lembrei da minha vó, da minha infância e me senti profundamente conectada com cada letra cantada. A vida deles não era perfeita, mas era cotidiana, era familiar e emocionante em cada segundo.Parte disso também se deve as atuações. Um elenco de ouro, com atores veteranos e também atores mirins, todos brilhantes em captar o que é o realismo profundo, cru e atravessador de gerações que é este drama!
Ninguém é perfeito, ninguém é completo, mas eu diria que um drama que nos faz chorar, refletir e querer abraçar nossos pais é sim perfeito.
Was this review helpful to you?
Articulated down to the bones
Dear X aims to show us a manipulative and sociopathic protagonist who, despite all the adversities she faces in life, always finds a way to excel and survive.The drama builds its narrative around Baek A-jin, a deliberately unlikeable protagonist whose arc rejects any promise of easy redemption. In theory, this is commendable. In practice, the script oscillates between the courage to observe and the temptation to over-explain. Dear X wants to be unsettling, but frequently softens the impact with excessive psychological justifications, as if fearing that the audience wouldn't tolerate the moral silence.The series adopts a temporal fragmentation intended to reflect the protagonist's broken psyche. However, this device isn't always used with dramatic rigor. At various points, the flashbacks function less as in-depth exploration and more as redundant reinforcement of an already established point: A-jin learned early on that affection is power. This insistence weakens the subtlety and creates a sense of didacticism disguised as complexity.Baek A-jin is the absolute axis of the work, but the text seems unable to decide whether to observe her or defend her. The result is a character who should be ambiguous, but who at times becomes excessively calculated by the script itself. The suffering is real, but carefully framed so as never to escape narrative control. There is a lack of risk. There is a lack of the possibility of her being truly inexplicable.In more mature psychological works, discomfort arises from what cannot be rationalized. Dear X, on the contrary, frequently rationalizes everything.The characters around A-jin exist mostly as symbolic functions, not as individuals. They are mirrors, triggers, or instruments of guilt. Few possess their own density. This impoverishes the conflict, as the world around the protagonist seems artificially organized to validate her trajectory, instead of confronting her in an unpredictable way.Visually, the drama is consistent with its proposal: cold, elegant, almost aseptic. The photography reflects the protagonist's emotional dissociation well, but this aesthetic becomes repetitive. The direction rarely breaks its own visual logic to create real shock or tension. Everything is too beautiful for a story that intends to talk about emotional degradation.Dear X wants to discuss misogyny, emotional exploitation, the cult of image, and the silent violence of fame. The themes are relevant, but the discourse sometimes slips into a comfortable critique, pointing out the system without ever allowing the viewer to feel complicit in it. The work denounces, but does not compromise.Dear X is an intellectually ambitious, aesthetically refined, and emotionally restrained drama for what it sets out to do. It observes pain with elegance, but rarely lets it escape the frame. It lacks brutality. It lacks the chaos that would make its protagonist truly disturbing.I would also like to comment on the cast's performance; from the leads to the supporting cast, everyone shines brightly and is certainly the key element of the drama. You Jung embodies the role, she completely becomes Ah Jin and doesn't let us doubt her performance for a single moment. And once again, she reminds us why she is Korea's passion!
It's not a shallow work. But it's also not as deep as it believes itself to be.
It's a well-articulated psychological study, but excessively self-aware—more concerned with appearing complex than with being truly devastating.
Was this review helpful to you?
