Gastoski

When (low) life gives you porcelain

South Korea, '70s: Eyeing the opportunity for a highly lucrative business deal, small-time criminal O Gwan Seok and his nephew O Hui Dong join a ship expedition intent on recovering a large quantity of Chinese ceramics. The submerged treasure is located inside a wreck sunk off the coast of Mokpo, in South Jeolla Province; however, they need to find a financier and some divers, all without arousing the suspicion of the police and any rival treasure hunters...

One could start from the assumption that ‘Low Life’ is not exactly a production for all tastes, given that the accumulation of stylistic elements within it goes somewhat against the grain of the classic (even aesthetic) canons of the multitude of more openly celebrated contemporary dramas.

While it is true that at times it seems almost like a coming-of-age story, and the voiceover in several places reinforces this idea, adding a melodramatic element that is perhaps a little rhetorical but undoubtedly charming, it is nevertheless in the generalised human scenario that the main strengths lie.

At the heart of it all, as always when it comes to money, fortune, wealth and “treasures”, there is obviously greed and avidity, which here go hand in hand with the inevitable feeling of vain hope and social redemption linked to the ephemeral illusion of achieving economic targets.

Certainly valuable and courageous is the choice to represent a microcosm of marginal characters, outcasts and petty criminals, ready to fight each other in order to obtain the coveted ‘treasure’ in the illusion that this lucrative opportunity could change their lives.
Modern buccaneers, one might say.

And mind you, greed here is not limited to certain characters in the drama, but is a generalised fault that overwhelms every single element of the story and, in many places, spares no one, not even in the fleeting emotional bonds that occasionally reveal themselves, perhaps with the illusion of some search for “normality”.

Undoubtedly, it is a picture full of shadows and contradictions, where, at least for a large part of the drama, there is no room for purity and moral integrity, and where every character in the story, either by their own decision or by a cruel twist of fate, ends up choosing the most immediate path, as well as, inevitably, the most dangerous one.

For some, a certain ‘harshness’ in the approach to ‘Low Life’ may be determined by an almost wait-and-see first section, which is extremely articulate and dialogue-heavy, where, cinematographically speaking, the plot development is rather limited (one could say that ‘little is happening’ from an action point of view), but which is essential for introducing the vast and varied cast, with all their peculiarities and contradictions; It is clearly with the start of the treasure hunt that, inevitably, the human dynamics and behavioural tensions that had been suppressed until then will explode...

So double-crossing, suspicion, betrayal and fragile alliances prevail, thanks to the excellent ensemble cast and skilful direction that alternates moments of comedy and black humour with sudden, chilling bursts of violence and sadism, as if to emphasise the ambiguous nature of the characters portrayed in the story.

The characterisation of O Gwan Seok by the excellent Ryu Seung-ryong is truly remarkable. He is an utterly impassive and cynical figure – a mask that seems to come straight out of 1970s genre movies – ready to do anything to achieve his targets; However, in my opinion, the talented Im Soo Jung is unbeatable in the role of the ruthless Yang Jeong Sook, a sort of cold and manipulative “dark lady” who remains unperturbed and determined for most of the story, even if her mask occasionally gives way to moments of unexpected romance.

More classic is Yang Se Jong's portrayal of the young O Hui Dong, who, while accepting the (dirty) rules of the business, bends, especially in the last few episodes, for obvious narrative reasons, to a more stereotyped and “chivalrous” representation of what is necessary.

But it is the ensemble of many well-known and distinctive faces, playing the parts of con artists, ceramist experts, suburban wrestlers and boxers, improvised divers, corrupt police officers and all the motley crew that follows them, that allows ‘Low Life’ to be appreciated as a whole.

Clearly, it is not a perfect drama; the ending is a bit rushed and perhaps too ‘open,’ and, as already mentioned, patience and attention are required at the beginning. There may also be some somewhat forced twists at the end, but you are rewarded with a beautiful adventure that offers an interesting—and nostalgic—portrait of a particular historical period (the '70s), where the first signs of the economic and urban boom (and, of course, speculation) that will come to Seoul are already visible, in contrast to the representation of urban marginality and the aesthetics of the slums, well rendered by a careful reproduction of the locations, costumes and incredible looks of the time.

7 ½

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This Must Be the Place (To Translate Love)

The premise of Can This Love Be Translated? is undoubtedly appealing.
A drama that plays on linguistic differences, manages to weave Italian into its narrative structure and moves between fascinating international settings such as Canada, Italy, Japan and Korea, it seems to have all the right ingredients to surprise. However, once the initial impact has worn off, the series reveals its limitations: a rather thin narrative, which develops according to familiar patterns and struggles to stand out and really explore the subject matter, getting lost in smoke and mirrors and convoluted musings. Everything remains superficial, proceeding by accumulation and ending in a rambling and inconclusive manner.

And that's a shame, because the set of themes deserved a much more elaborate narrative; telling the story of love, identity and trauma through the filter of linguistic and cultural translation, especially in a meta-cinematic context – albeit reduced to a horrifying case of “dating show” around the world – would in itself be an excellent starting point:
Love, like language, is an imperfect system: Something is always lost in the transition from one heart to another. It is constantly filtered: By the right words, by messages, by unspoken words that must be rephrased so as not to hurt, so as not to lose the other person. The act of translation is not only linguistic, but emotional. The characters try to make themselves “readable”...

It almost seems like a “tragedy of miscommunication”: even though they speak the same language, Ju Ho Jin and Cha Mu Hui do not understand each other, and translators are not needed when the problem is not language, but meaning.

In this game of “emotional translations”, Can This Love Be Translated? introduces an element that is seemingly unrelated and unconventional, but in reality powerful, at least in principle: Do Ra Mi. A character who -initially- functions as the protagonist's alter ego — her lighter, more ironic version, the one who says what she cannot say — but who ultimately reveals herself to be something more trivially introjected.

Not an autonomous presence, but a functional projection that openly “betrays” the narrative construction; initially, the main character’s trauma is introduced with considerable weight (coma, loss of control, scarred childhood) but then it conforms, it is handled as a narrative mechanism, not as a transformative experience; Do Ra-mi - in principle - would be a “valve” that allows the protagonist to say what she does not dare to say, to act on what she cannot process, until the final “explanation” which, unreasonably, overturns everything, bringing it back to a cliché tiredly exploited in the Dramaverse, especially in the golden age; the internalised maternal voice, the one that teaches how to make oneself acceptable, how to survive emotionally, how to love “well”.

However, even this surprise is handled more as a narrative clarification than as a real emotional earthquake; even after the revelation, the conflict does not really intensify. The internalised mother does not suffocate, dominate or ever threaten to take definitive control. She is a tamed ghost, more explanatory than destabilising. In this way, the childhood trauma – which is evoked with great emphasis – never becomes a force capable of irreversibly redefining the protagonist's present. Everything is accepted and overcome with lightness...

Furthermore, from a cinematic point of view, the choice of an “off-screen” solution (... “I'll meet her in Koreatown” ...) to resolve what is, to all intents and purposes, the narrative core of the drama, is absolutely unacceptable and unforgivable!

Unforgivable, like the representation of Italy, once again reduced to a stereotype, to an imaginary concept rather than the real country; For decades, the narrative of the Belpaese, mainly due to Hollywood, has portrayed Italy as a narrative postcard, an open-air museum with its slow pace, almost invisible work, as if we were a nation of slackers, permanent conviviality, and the absurd rituals of coffee, wine and weddings (the whole part about the protagonist's mother's wedding is an anthology of the ridiculous...); and here there is also a touch of irony, where a drama entitled “Can This Love Be Translated?” ends up not really “translating” Italy, but adapting it to a convenient, already familiar language.

A compendium of the most hackneyed narrative clichés of K-drama, ‘CTLBT’ plays on the tried and tested, offering an accessible, elegant and emotionally safe narrative in which it seems that the choice has been made not to make the characters pay a real emotional price. No truly irreversible choices, no net losses. And without loss, the conclusion struggles to feel necessary in a drama that promises complexity but chooses consolation, leaving two doubts that are at least concrete;

The Netflix model focuses on building media hype to capture the “present”, with a young, beautiful, "Instagrammable" lead actress, a beloved actor who never divides opinion – their excellent performances practically single-handedly “save” the drama – and a “clean”, explained, resolved trauma; all set in a beautiful scenario that leads one to think that the whole thing is the result of a major global marketing operation.

"Can This Love Be Translated" is not a creative failure—the series is saved by its craftsmanship and adequate cast—but rather a deliberate choice of narrative safety in a context of global aesthetic ambition. Perhaps for younger generations – or for those who have no memory of the great dramas of the early 2000s or the more radical titles of the 2010s – this series seems mature because it deals with trauma, identity and social issues. But talking about them is not the same as experiencing them, it is simply finding oneself in a comfort zone that works very well at the moment, generates discussion, etc., but which, perhaps in a few years' time, will be remembered as one of those “nice Netflix dramas”.
6 ½

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“We are all prisoners... prisoners of our own nature”

A kind of psychological noir more than a typical “solution-driven” thriller, “Reverse” builds its strength through an intricate structure that functions not as a mere narrative device, but rather as a system of distorted perceptions capable, from its very first scenes, of immersing the viewer in a skillful game of reversals, ingeniously portraying the way memory, trauma and desire can deform the very perception of truth.

Structured with meticulous ingenuity through flashbacks, ellipses, temporal gaps, sensory memories, omissions — real or presumed — and continuous shifts in perspective, the drama uses its narrative fragmentation not simply to create suspense, but above all to drag the viewer into a labyrinthine journey inside a fractured consciousness, where past and present progressively lose any clear boundary.

Despite its relatively short length — only 8 episodes — the drama constantly manages to call into question what the previous episode seemed to have established, overturning every viewpoint perhaps too hastily taken for granted. Through deception and manipulation, unexpected fractures, memories that take on the tone of confession and revelations that verge on staged performance, the viewer is progressively deprived, much like the protagonists themselves, of any stable point of reference, eventually coming to constantly doubt the very meaning of the images being shown.

Rather than using amnesia as a simple thriller device, "Reverse" gradually transforms memory into a true identity performance, where the recovery of recollections coincides not so much with healing, but rather with the slow re-emergence of a repressed, traumatized and potentially manipulative personality.

It is here that "Reverse" performs its most disturbing movement: instead of clearly separating victims from perpetrators, the drama constantly works on their overlap, forcing the viewer to continuously reconsider the moral role of its characters.

Beneath its thriller structure also emerges a surprisingly fierce reflection on class privilege and on the ability of elites to transform guilt into aesthetics. Art itself, through the character of Hee Su (an excellent Kim Jae Kyung), seems to become a sublimation of trauma and privilege, to the point of converting the suffering of others into creative language, sensitivity and even moral legitimization.

It is therefore no surprise that the image of fire returns throughout the entire series, transforming itself into primal trauma, sensory memory and the symbolic repetition of an impossible-to-erase violence. Every fire, whether real or evoked, seems to lead the characters back toward the same nucleus of guilt, desire and self-destruction. Within such an unstable perceptual and moral landscape, the work of the actors becomes fundamental, as they are called not to embody immediately readable figures, but rather characters perpetually suspended between trauma, simulation and moral ambiguity.

In this regard, Seo Ji-hye probably delivers the strongest performance of the series, crafting a version of Myo Jin that is layered, elusive and continuously indecipherable. Through an extremely restrained control of glances, hesitations and minimal expressive variations, the actress simultaneously conveys fragility, pain, lucidity and calculation, transforming the very face of the character into an ambiguous territory that the drama constantly invites the viewer to reinterpret.

While Seo Ji-hye chooses the path of opacity and continuous indecipherability, Go Soo instead constructs a Jun-Ho that explicitly recalls certain classic figures from Hollywood psychological noir. His elegant charm, seemingly reassuring control, emotional manipulation and the gradual emergence of opportunistic cruelty inevitably evoke archetypes close to Charles Boyer in “Gaslight”, with Jun-Ho transforming the house he shares with Myo Jin into a sophisticated perceptual prison built upon sedation, isolation and emotional control, where protection and coercion ultimately become indistinguishable.

More melancholic and crepuscular, instead, is the figure of Adjushi Ki Cheol portrayed by Yoon Je Moon, a character who seems to come directly from a Jean-Pierre Melville polar: a man consumed by time, guilt and the awareness of his imminent death, yet still capable of preserving, until the very end, a form of silent moral lucidity.

Balancing the tragic tension are also the deliberately more buffoonish characterizations of the secondary criminals, often constructed on the border between real menace and grotesque mockery, in a way that recalls certain noir deviations found in the work of Joel and Ethan Coen, where violence, absurdity and dark comedy coexist within the same degraded moral universe.

"Reverse"ultimately makes its relationship with the viewer fully explicit above all in its finale, where one of the most effective intuitions of the concluding episode is represented by the figure of the psychiatrist, who gradually assumes the role of a true alter ego for the audience itself. Like the viewer, the doctor is forced to retroactively reconsider every gesture, every answer and every hesitation shown by Myo Jin, realizing far too late that she too has been manipulated by a truth constructed through omissions, simulations and deliberately altered perceptual fragments.

In the courage of its conclusion, "Reverse" probably finds its most complete dimension. Far removed from the increasingly common tendency to redirect ambiguity toward conciliatory or morally reassuring structures, the drama refuses any form of definitive reconciliation, choosing instead to preserve until the very end the painful, contradictory and profoundly unstable nature of its characters.

Truth, in "Reverse", does not truly liberate anyone, restore balance or transform revenge into a cathartic or morally ordered journey. On the contrary, every revelation seems to further contaminate what the viewer believed they had finally understood, leading the drama toward a conclusion that is both tragic and ambiguously unsettling.

The “gift” evoked in the final part of the series therefore acquires a devastating meaning: not merely an extreme gesture or terminal provocation, but the possible specular recognition of a shared darkness that Myo Jin, perhaps too late, ultimately begins to glimpse within herself as well.

Perhaps the most radical choice made by "Reverse" lies precisely in understanding that certain truths do not serve to heal, absolve or restore order, but merely to reveal how deeply trauma, desire and revenge can deform a human being. Even when there is no longer any possibility of turning back.

8/10

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"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Heartbreaking and evocative from its magnificent opening credits, “The Scarecrow” fully achieves every narrative goal it sets for itself, gradually transforming its crime framework into something far broader and more painful. What initially appears to be a conventional serial killer investigation slowly evolves into a collective tragedy, an irreversible accumulation of consequences where guilt, compromise, denied truths, grief and memory settle layer upon layer, forming a sorrowful elegy for lives trapped within the failures of an entire system.

Drawing inspiration from the infamous Hwaseong murders, the drama uses real-life events as the starting point for a far broader and more disturbing reflection. The killer ultimately comes to represent only one part of the horror, while the true heart of the narrative gradually emerges through the distortions of a system incapable of distinguishing between justice and convenience, where power, prestige, fear and opportunism contribute, directly or indirectly, to the making of the tragedy.

The killer is merely the catalyst. The real tragedy begins when Evil finds fertile ground in the distortions of power, the indifference of institutions and the fragility of individuals. From that moment onward, every mistake generates a new consequence, every omission creates another victim, and truth becomes increasingly difficult to separate from its manipulations.

Making this descent into the grey areas of collective conscience even more compelling is a remarkably sophisticated approach to characterization, one that consistently avoids the reassuring dichotomy of "good" and "evil." With the exception of the victims of the injustices perpetrated by the police and the prosecution, almost no one is ever reduced to a single narrative function.

More than mere individuals, many of the protagonists become mirrors through which the drama reflects the tensions and ambiguities of Korean society at the time, carrying on their shoulders not only their own personal destinies, but also the wounds, compromises and contradictions of an entire system, while never losing their fragile and painfully human dimension.

Particularly emblematic is the figure of prosecutor Shi-young, a character who quickly transcends the role of a simple antagonist to become the embodiment of a system built upon privilege, prestige and the exercise of power. Corrupt, manipulative and often morally repulsive, he nevertheless remains far too complex to be dismissed as a conventional villain, contributing to the constant ethical destabilization that stands among the drama's most fascinating achievements.

Serving as his counterpart is Tae-joo, a detective driven by a genuine search for truth, yet gradually consumed by the very obsession that should guide him. Far from being an irreproachable hero, he too ultimately contributes, directly or indirectly, to the chain of mistakes and tragedies that runs throughout the story.

Their relationship, built upon a constant oscillation between attraction and repulsion, trust and betrayal, almost recalls the parable of the scorpion and the frog. Shi-young seems to seek confrontation with Tae-joo relentlessly, as though he needs him as a moral reflection of the man, he himself might have become, while Tae-joo spends much of his life desperately trying to prove that a fundamental difference exists between them.

And yet, proximity to Evil deforms even those who stubbornly attempt to fight it, making their relationship one of the most tragic and complex pillars of the entire drama.

Equally compelling is the portrayal of serial killer Ki-hwan, a character the drama consistently refuses to turn into either an exceptional monster or a near-mythological figure. Far removed from the image of the omnipotent criminal mastermind, Ki-hwan emerges instead as an ordinary man, socially invisible, consumed by envy, resentment and a profound sense of inadequacy.

What makes him even more unsettling is precisely this apparent ordinariness. The moment he chooses to let his brother Ki-beom take the blame and be sacrificed in his place marks the true point of no return for the story, not only on a criminal level, but on a deeply human one as well. In that decision lies more than a simple instinct for self-preservation; it becomes the ultimate rejection of any emotional, familial or moral bond.

As the narrative shifts between past and present, the conversations between Ki-hwan and Tae-joo in 2019 gradually take on the shape of a long and painful psychological examination, one in which the killer continues to exert a subtle form of control over the detective. What emerges from these encounters is not the portrait of a man haunted by his crimes or consumed by remorse. Instead, Ki-hwan seems to observe events with an almost playful detachment, as though the suffering he caused were little more than a secondary element in a game that began decades earlier.

For this reason, their final confrontation never feels like a liberating reckoning. What unfolds instead is the continuation of a wound that has remained open for more than thirty years, a suspended dialogue between two men who have spent their lives imprisoned, albeit in profoundly different ways, by the consequences of the same tragedy.

Standing before that prison door as it closes for the last time, Ki-hwan makes one final attempt to preserve the toxic bond that, for three decades, allowed him to remain at the centre of someone else's life.

While the investigation provides the narrative's driving force, some of the drama's most powerful and emotionally resonant moments emerge through its intricate family dynamics. Revelations involving hidden identities, blood ties, children unaware of their origins and long-buried truths gradually take on the contours of a modern Greek tragedy, where fate cruelly intertwines victims, perpetrators and survivors alike.

The revelation that Tae-joo, Shi-young and Sun-young share the same family origins is far more than a melodramatic twist. As the story unfolds, it becomes yet another reminder of the extent to which the past continues to shape the lives of its characters, making the boundary between individual responsibility and inherited burdens all the more painful.

Paradoxically, it is precisely when the institutions reveal their inability to deliver genuine justice that the drama discovers its most sincere form of redemption. Not in courtrooms, nor in investigations reopened decades later, but in human relationships. Truths are finally revealed, identities acknowledged, sacrifices made for the sake of others, and difficult paths towards forgiveness begin to achieve what the justice system never could.

Young-beom stands as perhaps the clearest example of this. Forced to reconstruct the memory of a father he never knew, and initially convinced that Tae-joo bore primary responsibility for his death, his gradual understanding of the truth emerges not through a verdict or a decisive piece of evidence, but through encounters with those who lived through the tragedy and continue to carry its scars.

Even more significant is the way the drama approaches its innocents. Characters such as Ki-beom, Seok-man, Young-beom, the grieving family of little Hye-jin, whose tragic fate continues to echo throughout the narrative, and, ultimately, Tae-joo himself, endure irreparable losses, stolen years and a pain that no verdict could ever erase, yet they are never defined by resentment.

In a story shaped by compromises, omissions and shared responsibility, they become the guardians of its most profoundly human quality: the ability to keep living without allowing the injustice they suffered to become a form of poison in its own right.

As the moving epilogue suggests, some wounds can never truly heal, and certain absences can never be filled. They may, however, be understood, shared and, perhaps, accepted. It is within this fragile possibility of reconciliation with the past that “The Scarecrow” finds its deepest and most affecting form of hope.

In a television landscape that too often relies on narrative shortcuts, easy absolutions and simplified moral frameworks, “The Scarecrow” stands as a rare example of writing capable of engaging with complex material without betraying its contradictions. While deeply rooted in a story tied to modern South Korean history, the drama ultimately speaks a universal language, transforming its criminal narrative into a reflection on power, responsibility, memory and the consequences of our choices.

A result made possible not only by the quality of the writing, but also by an extraordinary ensemble cast whose commitment and emotional authenticity elevate every stage of the narrative. While Park Hae-soo, Lee Hee-joon and Jung Moon-sung deliver performances of remarkable depth and intensity, one of the drama's greatest strengths lies in the collective work of its entire cast. From leading roles to supporting characters, each performer contributes to creating a world that feels lived-in, believable and profoundly human, allowing even the smallest emotional nuances of the story to resonate with remarkable force.

The series offers neither complete consolation nor fully restorative justice. Some wounds remain open, some wrongs go unpunished, and many lives continue to bear the marks of what happened. Yet, without ever abandoning its bitterness, “The Scarecrow” suggests that understanding the past may be the first step towards no longer being imprisoned by it.

More than a story about the guilty and the innocent, “The Scarecrow” is a story about people trying to live alongside what has been, slowly learning that moving forward does not mean forgetting, but finding the courage to continue living with their scars
9/10

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“The times are changing — just enough to stay the same.”

A profoundly revealing series within the contemporary Dramaverse, “Climax” stands out not so much for its undeniable intrinsic value, but for its inherently ambiguous and elusive nature — one that, precisely because of these qualities, seems destined to generate interpretations that are not always aligned.

Within an increasingly congested landscape, ever more oriented toward recognizable, reassuring, and easily consumable formulas, works like this move in the opposite direction: they slow down, they layer, they refuse simplification, and above all, they deny the viewer a comfortable position from which to observe events. This is not a flaw — but a deliberate, almost programmatic choice.

It is perhaps along these lines that one can anticipate a reception that may not be entirely uniform, as a narrative so unwilling to provide immediate coordinates demands a different kind of attention — less oriented toward consumption and more toward engagement.

In this sense, some of the reservations that often emerge in response to works of this nature — related to perceived slowness, lack of immediacy, or difficulty of interpretation — seem to reflect more a different mode of viewing than actual limitations of the work itself.

This points to a deeper shift, one that concerns not so much taste as the ability to place a work within the evolving trajectory of cinematic language. Without a clearly defined memory — even a recent one — of forms and their transformations, any narrative risks being perceived only through its immediate impact, losing the very stratification that gives it lasting value.

Within this framework, “Climax “reveals a striking coherence, rejecting any form of simplification and choosing, from the very beginning, to construct a narrative universe that offers neither moral footholds nor stable points of reference. Its characters are not defined through reassuring categories — heroes, victims, antagonists — but instead move along a far more unstable axis, where ambition, survival, and compromise inevitably overlap.

Bang Tae-seop, an ambitious prosecutor reinventing himself as a political figure, embodies perhaps the most evident trajectory of this transformation: a path that does not distance him from the system, but gradually leads him to become an integral part of it. Alongside him, Chu Sang-ah, an actress marked by trauma and a career constantly exposed to manipulation and coercion, represents the most elusive and contradictory face of the narrative, suspended between fragility and calculation, between survival instinct and awareness of her own “role.”

Around them, figures such as Lee Yang-mi — a true nexus of power — and Hwang Jeong-won, only apparently more marginal yet emotionally pivotal, contribute to shaping a system in which every relationship, even the most intimate, is inevitably contaminated by dynamics of control, dominance, and adaptation.

It is precisely through the evolving trajectories of these two protagonists that the deeper nature of the series becomes fully apparent. Tae-seop, initially driven by an ambition still tied to a notion of personal redemption, gradually abandons any residual form of opposition, adapting with increasing lucidity to the logic of power until he becomes a fully conscious agent within it. His transformation is not abrupt, but gradual and almost inevitable, replacing conflict with control, and ethics with effectiveness.

Sang-ah, by contrast, operates on a more elusive and less linear plane — and for that very reason, a more destabilizing one. Her evolution does not follow a recognizable trajectory, but unfolds through successive layers, alternating moments of apparent vulnerability with sudden shifts toward a colder, more calculated awareness. She is a character that resists definition, and it is precisely in this constant oscillation that her strength lies: victim and strategist, emotional presence and constructed persona, never fully one or the other.

Within their relationship, these tensions do not cancel each other out, but rather recognize and integrate one another. What emerges is not a bond grounded in traditional emotional dynamics, but a form of balance built on mutual adaptation, shared risk, and an implicit understanding of the rules of the game. Rather than moving closer, the two protagonists ultimately align, becoming expressions of the same system — one that leaves no room for alternatives.

It is within this convergence that the systemic nature of “Climax” becomes most evident. Politics, show business, justice, and media are never treated as separate domains, but as interconnected parts of a single organism, capable of absorbing, reshaping, and redefining power dynamics from within. There is no real “outside,” no genuine possibility of escape: every attempt at resistance is ultimately absorbed, transformed, neutralized.

In this context, corruption does not appear as an exception or deviation, but as a structural condition — almost inevitable. Characters are not corrupted over time; they either already are, or become so insofar as they learn to survive. It is a process of adaptation rather than downfall, where the distinction between choice and necessity becomes increasingly blurred.

Within this framework, even morality loses clear definition. “Climax” rejects any manichean approach, carefully avoiding rigid distinctions between guilt and innocence, victim and perpetrator. Every character inhabits a grey zone, where actions appear both necessary and questionable, and survival often prevails over any notion of integrity.

In this sense, Sang-ah’s characterization proves particularly significant, revealing — especially in the private and more concealed dimension of her “true self” — a fragility that partially escapes the dominant logic of the system. It is precisely in these more intimate, less exposed moments that a more sincere emotional core emerges, one not entirely reducible to calculation and strategy.

This is not redemption, nor an attempt at moral rehabilitation, but rather an internal fracture that makes the character even more complex and resistant to rigid judgment.

If “Climax” sustains its structure with such coherence, it is also — and perhaps above all — thanks to a cast that deliberately avoids any form of self-indulgence. These are not performances designed to please, nor characters meant to be liked, but figures that exist within the system that shapes them, embodying all its contradictions.

Ju Ji-hoon once again confirms a rare versatility, moving across vastly different registers with remarkable ease, here translating into a progressive restraint that renders ambition almost inevitable, stripped of any overt emphasis.

Ha Ji-won delivers one of the most complex and layered performances of her career, crafting a character that constantly eludes definition. Her performance unfolds through shifts and sudden tonal changes, balancing fragility and control with disarming naturalness, never slipping into mannerism — at times approaching a form of meta-performance.

Nana embraces a deliberately deglamorized image and works through subtraction, building a presence that initially appears cryptic and distant, only to gradually reveal a deeply emotional and tragic dimension.

Cha Joo-young, on the other hand, embodies the structural core of power itself: she does not simply portray it, but makes it visible, giving shape to a figure that encapsulates the distortions of a system with no apparent alternative.

Together, they do not merely support the narrative — they make it believable, giving form to a system that, through their performances, becomes the true protagonist of the story.

It is precisely in light of this construction that “Climax’s ending reveals its full coherence. Far from any need for catharsis or moral resolution, the conclusion does not aim to resolve, but to stabilize. Tensions are not released, but absorbed; conflicts do not reach synthesis, but find a new placement within the same system that generated them.

There is no true fall, nor a real ascent: what changes is the position of the elements within a structure that continues to function according to the same logic. Power is neither challenged nor dismantled — it reorganizes, adapts, evolves. And the characters, far from being judged or redeemed, find a form of equilibrium precisely insofar as they accept being part of it.

It is a conclusion that may feel disorienting, precisely because it refuses simplification and offers no comforting resolution — yet it is likely the only possible one for a narrative that, from the beginning, has chosen to inhabit a space of constant ambiguity, never yielding to the temptation of clear moral distinctions.

“Climax” does not provide answers, nor does it attempt to indicate a direction. Rather, it invites the viewer to question their own position within dynamics that, however extreme they may seem, retain a striking sense of familiarity. It is not a conciliatory vision, nor a reassuring one.

But it is, precisely for that reason, remarkably lucid — and perhaps, unavoidably necessary.

8½

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Lonely silence here / And I'm not the one / Make your house a home

A work poised between two eras, Spring in a Small Town (1948) by Fei Mu stands as one of the most lucid portrayals of a world coming to an end — and of the lingering inability to imagine what might replace it.

From its very first moments, the film unfolds with the precision of a theatrical composition: a small group of characters, almost archetypal in nature, arranged within a confined space that seems to suspend time itself. The ailing, withdrawn husband; the wife trapped in a life drained of desire; the younger sister, still open to the possibility of a future; the silent, devoted servant; and the returning doctor from the past — each figure enters the scene already charged with tension, as if part of a fragile balance destined to fracture.

Yet beneath this seemingly classical structure lies a striking modernity. The emotions that shape these characters — desire, frustration, fear of change — do not belong solely to their time, but resonate deeply with our own. Within this suspended microcosm, dominated by a decaying house that emerges as a living narrative organism, Fei Mu crafts a film in which space does not merely contain the action, but reflects and confines it, becoming the silent custodian of a world slowly fading away.

At the heart of the movie lies a love triangle that deliberately avoids conventional melodrama, embracing instead the quieter, more painful path of inaction. The return of the doctor — tied to the woman by a long-suppressed emotional bond — introduces the possibility of change, yet that possibility remains suspended, never fully pursued. Desire is present, unmistakable, but it never finds the strength to become action.

Within this fragile equilibrium stands the husband, unaware of the previous liaison between the two, whose illness — ambiguous, never entirely defined but more than self-harm — takes on a meaning far beyond the personal. His passive presence becomes the silent axis around which all unfulfilled choices revolve. He is not an antagonist, but a condition: the embodiment of a world unable to react, unable to transform itself.

The triangle remains unresolved, and it is precisely in this lack of resolution that its tragic force resides. This is not a film about desire, but about the impossibility of acting upon it.

The title itself suggests a promise the film continuously evokes without ever fulfilling. Spring — traditionally a symbol of renewal — takes on an ambiguous, almost ironic meaning here: nature signals change, yet the characters remain incapable of embodying it. Time passes, seasons shift, but nothing truly transforms, as made clear in the ‘moral’ resolution of the finale.

In this tension between natural movement and human immobility, the film’s allegorical dimension emerges. Without ever explicitly invoking historical context, Fei Mu constructs a microcosm that reflects a broader condition: a society suspended between the end of one order and the inability to define the next. The decaying house, restrained bodies, and unfulfilled desires become visible traces of a transformation that has yet to take shape, dictated by a future that remains unclear.

Like many movies born in times of political tension or cultural constraint, the narrative operates on a lateral plane, where the personal becomes a vehicle for the political, and intimacy turns into allegory. The film does not depict History — it allows it to seep through gestures, silences, and spaces.

There is no hesitation in saying it: Spring in a Small Town is an absolute masterpiece, a true swan song from a director who was forced to emigrate to Hong Kong shortly afterwards; Not only one of the highest achievements of Chinese cinema, but a work that transcends time, style, and historical context without losing any of its emotional urgency.

In an era often dominated by excess, Fei Mu demonstrates how the greatest intensity can emerge through restraint, transforming silence, space, and minimal gestures into living cinematic matter.
Decades later, what remains most striking is not only its formal perfection, compared to a structure that could not be more minimalist, but its enduring relevance — because the hesitations, suppressed desires, and quiet fears that inhabit its characters are still our own.

That we can rediscover a film like this today is part of its quiet miracle (although the DVD release for the Italian market doesn’t do it full justice): a work once at risk of fading into obscurity now returns, intact, to remind us that great cinema never truly belongs to the past.

10/10

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Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe

Compared to the substantial number of dramas that remain etched in the collective memory — constantly referenced, celebrated and reimagined — there are others that, almost inexplicably, slip into obscurity, swallowed up by time, the industry’s relentless turnover and an audience ever hungry for something new. "That Summer Typhoon" belongs precisely to this second category: a work that seems to have dissolved into the background noise of the Dramaverse, yet on closer inspection reveals an ambitious narrative structure, a surprising emotional depth and a thematic clarity that remains disarmingly relevant even today.

It is, without a doubt, a drama of its time — but precisely for that reason it manages to foreshadow, with unsettling prescience, many of the dynamics we now take almost for granted: the invasive nature of the press, the artificial construction of celebrity, the increasingly blurred line between truth and public narrative, and the often-exorbitant price of success.
And yet, beneath this surface of glitz, spotlights and scandal, there beats a deeply melodramatic heart, built on fractured family ties, denied identities and truths deferred for far too long.

A sweeping, multi-layered narrative that can at times feel redundant across its thirty episodes, "Typhoon" constantly walks a fine line between excess and restraint, yet manages — and this is perhaps its greatest strength — never to lose its balance entirely. It is precisely in its insistence, in its returns and repetitions, that it finds a form of expression consistent with its very nature: a past that refuses to stay buried, a truth that demands space, an emotional storm — at times dangerously ambiguous — destined sooner or later to sweep everything away.

To revisit it today is to read it with a more discerning eye, one capable of recognising not only the limitations of a work inevitably tied to its era, but above all the strength of a narrative framework which, beneath the veneer of classic melodrama, conceals a surprisingly modern reflection on identity, image and responsibility.

On the surface, "That Summer Typhoon" presents itself as a classic early-2000s melodrama: the rise and fall of an actress, family secrets ready to resurface, impossible loves and artistic rivalries. Yet beneath this familiar structure, it builds something far more complex: a lucid reflection on identity, guilt and, above all, that fragile — and often insurmountable — boundary between private truth and public image.

In a world dominated by agencies, gossip and carefully constructed narratives, individuals move like pawns within a system that turns every event — even the most intimate — into spectacle. Success becomes a double-edged sword; fame, a mechanism that exposes, distorts and ultimately consumes.

From a narrative standpoint, That Summer Typhoon proves to be remarkably layered. It does not merely function as a family melodrama, but interweaves at least three distinct dimensions: the drama of the entertainment industry, the private tragedy of familial relationships, and a more subtle moral layer in which each revelation does not bring relief, but further complicates the characters’ lives.

Its structure unfolds through accumulation and reiteration: truths emerge, are questioned, then replaced by new versions, in a constant slippage that prevents any real stability. This is a familiar device in Korean melodrama of the period, yet here it is employed with unusual awareness, almost suggesting that no definitive truth exists — or that, when it does, it arrives too late to truly matter.

In this sense, the series moves fluidly between registers: moments of intense public exposure — press conferences, scandals, media intrusion — are set against intimate, often silent spaces where the emotional weight of events is felt without the need for explanation, further enhanced by a deeply effective musical score. It is precisely this oscillation between the external and the internal that gives the narrative its rhythm, despite the inevitable repetitions brought on by its length.

Even in its most repetitive passages, however, the series maintains a surprising equilibrium: each element contributes to a coherent whole, with individual threads ultimately converging into a single, overarching emotional “storm”.

"Typhoon" is, above all, a melodrama about truth and its consequences — a truth suppressed, concealed, manipulated and ultimately destined to resurface, sweeping everything and everyone away like the storm evoked in its title. Yet this is not merely a family secret, but a layered system of lies that encompasses individuals, relationships and an entire social ecosystem, where appearance outweighs substance and public image becomes a form of currency.

The drama thus constructs a dual narrative: on one level, the intimate, almost suffocating story of a family fractured by past choices and unresolved responsibility; on another, a broader reflection on the entertainment industry, the artificial construction of success and the intrusiveness of a media system eager to devour truth and reshape it into spectacle.

It is when this structure takes shape through the faces, gestures and silences of its characters that Typhoon makes its decisive leap, transforming from a potentially schematic narrative into a genuinely affecting experience.

Within this framework, even the most controversial element — the relationship between Soo-min and James — sheds any sensationalist dimension to take on the contours of a moral tragedy. The revelation is not deployed for shock value, but forces an irreversible reckoning, in which the characters must renounce not only a feeling, but an entire possible life.

It is, however, in its final stretch that "That Summer Typhoon" makes its most compelling shift, turning its melodramatic framework into a reflection on storytelling itself. The ‘film-within-a-film’ device — which reworks the characters’ lived experiences (with an ingenious reversal of roles!) — becomes a key interpretative lens: the pain is not resolved, but staged, transformed into a representation.

In this fragile balance between construction and authenticity, performance becomes the true emotional core of the narrative.

Jung Da-bin brings Soo-min to life with a disarming naturalness. There is never a sense of performance in the conventional sense: each gesture feels so spontaneous that acting and being seem to converge. Her arc unfolds through restraint, navigating increasingly complex emotional terrain without ever tipping into excess, preserving a clarity of gaze that becomes, paradoxically, her most radical form of resistance.

In hindsight, it is difficult not to perceive in this performance a glimpse of what might have been: a deeply human alternative to a frequently constructed and polished image of femininity. What remains is a subtle, painful trace that further deepens the emotional resonance of her work.

Alongside this quiet naturalism, Han Ye-seul adopts a more layered yet equally controlled approach. Her Eun-bi exists in a constant tension between public image and private fragility, shaped through nuance, silence and fleeting emotional fractures. It is a performance that avoids both caricature and victimhood, offering instead a complex, measured portrayal.

Viewed in retrospect, this characterisation acquires an almost meta-textual dimension: Eun-bi seems to echo the very public discourse that has often prioritised appearance over talent, embodying a figure who struggles — not always successfully — to assert a deeper, more authentic truth.

The result is a rare equilibrium: two performances that never compete for dominance, but instead build a relationship grounded in mutual recognition and quiet solidarity.

While Jung Chan, as director Kim Han-hee, operates within more conventional boundaries, Lee Jae-hwang finds greater depth in the tormented figure of James. Meanwhile, Lee Hyo-chun stands out in the role of Kang Jung-ok, delivering a particularly effective transformation: from a dishevelled figure trapped in the past to a gradually reconstituted presence, in a quiet yet powerful arc of personal rebirth.

Not without its flaws, "That Summer Typhoon" does at times suffer from redundancy and narrative overextension, with certain dynamics repeating to the point of perceptual fatigue. Yet in its closing movement, it takes a less predictable path: rather than culminating in rupture, it leans towards a fragile but genuine reconciliation, grounded not in forgetting, but in acceptance.
It is within this balance — between pain and awareness, loss and continuity — that the series finds its most complete expression.

Perhaps it is here that its most enduring value resides: in its ability to leave behind a trace that is less immediate, but more persistent — one that resurfaces over time and reveals itself fully only to a more attentive gaze. A subtle imprint in which constructed and lived identities overlap, at times even blur, amplifying — without ever stating it outright — a shared sense of fragility that extends beyond the characters to those who bring them to life.

And it is precisely for this reason that it deserves to be rediscovered.

-------------------------------------
To Jung Da-bin (1980-2007),
who, with her gentle radiance, has managed to transcend time and distance, reaching — silently — even here.
Wherever she may be, what remains is the imprint of a genuine emotion, and the memory of those who, even from afar, have never stopped watching over her.

8/10

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I know a girl who's soft and sweet / She's so fine, she can't be beat / Got everything that I desire

The web series Candy is a small and curious television production, which fits into the GL (girls love) rom-com genre. With its eight episodes of about half an hour each, it is easy to follow and manages to intrigue the viewer, even if it does not always fully explore its characters.

The story focuses on the reunion between Lin Can, now an established actress, and Nuan Nuan, her school friend from years ago. The two girls had been very close in the past, but a scandal linked to their relationship and hostility from their families had led to a painful separation. When they meet again as young adults, their feelings for each other seem to have not faded at all: Lin Can appears determined and direct, while Nuan Nuan remains shyer and more cautious. Under the pretext of hiring her as a personal assistant, the two begin to live together, slowly reopening a relationship that had been left unresolved.

Alongside the main couple, another romantic dynamic develops between manager Si Han and famous actress Jiang Wan. This quartet of characters gives rise to a narrative made up of skirmishes, subtle jealousies and romantic moments, in which the drama alternates between light-hearted comedy and more melodramatic passages.

One of the most interesting elements is the frequent use of flashbacks, which gradually reveal the characters' pasts and the reasons for their break-up. These flashbacks also paint a rather critical picture of the adult world: autocratic fathers, possessive or violent men, and unscrupulous figures of authority represent the main obstacles to the women's freedom. In this sense, the series introduces, without fully developing it, an almost “social” dimension linked to the difficulties the young women have had to face in their lives.

Not everything, however, always appears perfectly harmonised. Some narrative developments – such as episodes of sudden violence or situations bordering on thriller – introduce stronger tones than the prevailing romantic lightness. Even the psychological construction of the characters sometimes remains barely hinted at: many emotions are suggested rather than fully explored, probably also due to the relatively short length of the series.

The urban setting, on the other hand, is interesting: modern, clean and almost futuristic cities, often shown with surprisingly empty streets. This visual choice creates a particular, almost suspended atmosphere, which contributes to giving the show a fairly recognisable visual identity.

The overall tone remains delicate, however. The scenes between the main characters are constructed with restraint and discreet sensuality, without ever slipping into vulgarity. The title itself, “Candy”, refers to a small recurring gesture between Lin Can and Nuan Nuan: the exchange of sweets to soften difficult moments, a simple but effective metaphor for their bond.

Of course, we are not dealing with works as structured as queer cinema classics such as “Desert Hearts” or “The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love”. However, Candy remains a curious and enjoyable little series, capable of functioning exactly like the gesture of giving sweets: simple, discreet, but able to sweeten the viewer's experience. The ending is beautiful and compensatory.

7/10

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Free me now so I can see, the taste of wind and be like me (So Tonight That I Might See)

Oh Soo (Jo In-sung), abandoned at birth under a tree and raised in an orphanage, as an adult slips into gambling and fraud. A huge debt to a gangster gives him 100 days: either he pays up or he dies. With his back against the wall, an unexpected opportunity presents itself: to exploit his namesake, his deceased friend — disowned by his father — who was the brother of Oh Young (Song Hye-kyo), heiress to the PL Group. Upon her father's death, Oh Young becomes the sole heir to a business empire. Oh Soo then decides to stage the perfect scam: pretending to be her “lost” brother to get the money he needs to save himself. But deceiving Oh Young will not be easy: she may be blind, but she is anything but naive.

In the history of Dramaverse, 'That Winter, the Wind Blows' occupies a pivotal position. There was a time when Korean melodrama spoke the language of the seasons: impossible loves, hidden identities, illness, sacrifice, destiny. Then, before the full globalization of platforms, writing became more layered, more hybrid. This series is not a simple return to the past, but a bridge capable of integrating classic melodrama into a more complex structure, contaminated by noir, supported by a strong visual dimension and a highly evocative soundtrack.

Here, lie is not only a narrative tool: it is a choice that comes at a price. Winter is not simply an aesthetic backdrop but an existential condition. The characters survive rather than live; they choose deception as a temporary refuge from a world that has already asked too much of them.
The disturbing element is not the deception itself, but its ethical nature. Oh Soo does not simply pretend to be someone else: he takes on a name that implies a moral function. While the con man carries within him an origin marked by abandonment, the dead brother was defined by protection. The homonymy becomes the mechanism that slowly tightens the grip of destiny. By accepting that identity out of necessity, Oh Soo also inherits the symbolic weight of the name. Noir imposes the mask; melodrama empties it and fills it with responsibility.

Oh Young's blindness is not a Hollywood-style thriller device, but rather the distance that separates and defines the character. It amplifies her isolation and vulnerability in a world where every gesture can be betrayal. Protected by a wealth that is both a shield and a prison, she lives in a system of ambiguous relationships, where care and control are blurred.

Deception creates a grey area where rules are broken. By pretending, Oh Soo inhabits a role he does not fully master; by relying on his “brother”, Oh Young exposes his fragility to inevitable risk. The series makes a paradoxical move: it makes fraud a necessary step towards trust. The lie becomes the threshold between guilt and redemption, survival and authenticity. Not only is it a morally questionable act, but it is also a crack through which the truth enters.

Oh Soo's identity begins as a performance: he studies habits, controls reactions, moves like an actor. But here, the acting does not remain external. While in theatre the performer returns to being himself, in this story the role changes the player.
The stage is the mansion: a place of apparent protection, but also of control and secrets. Oh Soo carries out a sort of emotional domestic invasion, entering rooms that hold suspended identities. A space where noir sets the stage for deception and melodrama transforms it.

In noir genre conventions, the hidden room promises fatal revelations. When Oh Young sneaks in, the series seems to promise a dark twist. Instead, there is a reversal: inside there is no crime, but memories. Videotapes, maternal objects, fragments of a bright childhood. The structure is that of an identity thriller, but the heart is bittersweet melancholy.

By crossing that threshold, Oh Soo does not just invade a space: he enters a past that does not belong to him. He studies those memories strategically, transforming them into an appropriate performance: a phrase at the right moment, a tone that evokes shared pain. The room becomes the place where the character is created. But melodrama sabotages noir: internalized memory does not remain neutral.

The rootless con man appropriates for the first-time a past that continues to hold sway. Watching those VHS and looking at those photographs means coming into contact with a lost happiness he has never known. The house ceases to be merely a place of deception and becomes a space of transformation: the paradoxical beginning of a moral conscience.

From the middle of the tale, the noir atmosphere does not disappear, but the story takes an emotional leap: it becomes internalized, subtle, transforming debt and threat into matters of the heart and body. Time, previously marked by the economic deadline, splits in two: on the one hand, the countdown of the debt and the danger imposed by the gangster Mo Chul, on the other, the slow and uncertain rhythm of Oh Young's illness, the return of the tumor and the refusal of the operation.

The truth emerges: he is not her long-lost brother, but an orphan who grew up surrounded by debt, gambling and dangerous streets. This recognition, both expected and feared, does not break their bond; it transforms it. Oh Young, though surprised and hurt, clearly perceives the depth of the feelings that unite them: love is not born from a glance, but from proximity: from the sound of a bell, the taste of candy floss, the shared breath in a hospital room, no longer brotherly, but a love suspended between caution and ardor, between protection and desire. At the beginning, the series had established a code, a symbolic barrier, but here the dam breaks.

The shared pill — an animal euthanasia drug that becomes a symbol of extreme choice — marks the boundary between power and powerlessness, between calculation and affection, guilt and the desire of protection. When Oh Young asks Oh Soo, ‘Why didn't you kill me when you could?’, the series makes its most radical move: noir and melodrama meet, measuring the distance between morality and the heart. She offers him justification, but he does not carry out the act. Not because he cannot, not because he has been discovered, but because he no longer wants to. It is no more a question of succeeding in deception. It is a question of responsibility.

In the final chapters, Oh Soo faces his destiny almost like a hero in a Jean Pierre Melville movie: he renounces his possessions, leaves money to pay off his debt, moves towards moral and emotional catharsis, ready to risk everything to save Oh Young. He is preparing for closure; he is the heroic figure who accepts the end. At the beginning, everything revolved around a monetary debt. Now the debt has become moral. He entered the mansion for money; he leaves it renouncing it.

The extreme gesture she makes is the point at which the melodrama reaches its absolute limit. But what makes the scene powerful is not the gesture itself — it is what happens afterwards. Oh Soo's rescue is not only physical. It is the definitive revelation of feelings. The moment when Oh Young “hears” the video confession in the secret room is perfectly consistent with the whole discourse on blindness as an alternative perceptual device. She does not see the confession. She perceives it, and therefore her lucid and painful analysis is devastating precisely because it is not hysterical. She is aware; here it feels like being inside one of Douglas Sirk's flamboyant melodramas; the truth does not immediately liberate, the truth hurts, but it is the only ground on which authentic love can grow.

In the minutes leading up to the epilogue, the show seems to want to return to its original rhythm: the time of debt and the time of illness overlap once again. On one side, the operating theatre, suspended between light and darkness; on the other, the green table, the final theatre of destiny. It is here that noir regains its breath: the crucial game, the tense silence, the man who plays not only to save himself but to free himself. gamble does not win out: it is choice. The financial debt is paid; the moral debt remains.

And just when it seems to be heading towards possible redemption, the story takes an almost Shakespearean twists. Betrayed friendship, a knife in the back, sacrifice imposed by blackmail: fate strikes with the dry cruelty of a Melville movie. For a moment, we truly believe that winter will never end. That everything must end there. The great melodramas of the early days taught us this: love is destined to be consumed by loss.

The ending chooses a brighter path, but not an easy one. There is an almost metaphysical passage: spring melting away the rigidity of winter. The atmosphere becomes airy, suspended, and we no longer know whether what we see is reality or desire. A ringing sound crosses the space — an echo of that sound that had replaced the gaze, an invisible thread between two solitudes. The pain encountered is not erased, but traversed. Not a reward but an achievement; if at the beginning everything arose from a stolen name, in the end what remains is an earned identity.

The work of the fantastic Song Hye-kyo is, first and foremost, physical. Keeping her pupils suspended in limbo for almost the entire series, her head slightly turned to listen, her posture composed, almost crystallized, is not a simple technical exercise: it is a dramaturgical choice. The fixed gaze in all those extraordinary close-ups becomes the opposite of emotional immobility. The more controlled the body is, the more the interior expands. Her Oh Young is rational, analytical, ruthless with herself. The tapes recorded in the secret room are not just memories: they are self-criticism. She is the first to judge herself. This detail avoids any drift into pity.
She is not the “fragile girl”. She is a clear-minded person who is suffering. The pivotal moment when she enters Oh Soo's room alone and lies down on the bed crying is devastating precisely because it is not dramatized. There is no hysteria. There is a silent collapse. It is not a lack of wisdom: it is an excess of analysis compared to the heart. Oh Young is a woman who understands everything — too much — and that is precisely why she hurts herself.

In contrast, Jo In-sung's work is pure movement. If Song Hye-kyo is subtractive and fixed, Jo In-sung is continuous muscular tension. A shifting gaze. A clenched jaw. Sudden outbursts. A body always ready to flee or sprint. He is an actor who works on the edge of implosion. In his other works, that tension was almost self-destructive. Here, it is more layered. The moment when he asks himself, “Why didn't I just cheat her? Why did I make her fall in love with me?” is the cruelest summary of the series. He doesn't cry because he's been found out.
He cries because he has crossed the point of no return. He has turned a plan into a feeling. And making a male protagonist cry without making him seem pathetic is a very rare balancing act. The writing supports it, but it is the acting that makes it credible: the emotion comes across as a breaking of armour, not as a request for empathy.

When kisskh talks about “chemistry”, it often means attraction or romantic intensity. Here, it's something more structural. She works by subtraction. He works by accumulation. She is control. He is nerve. She internalises. He externalises. Their complementarity is not only emotional: it is rhythmic. On stage, their breathing patterns do not coincide — and it is precisely this asynchrony that generates tension. When they reach the confession, the scene does not explode: it settles. There is no detonation. There is balance.

This is chemistry in the highest sense: two forces that collide and change shape. And that is why the series avoids tear-jerking melodrama. Both actors protect the dignity of their characters. They do not ask the viewer to cry: they remove any excuse for not doing so. She does not beg for compassion. He does not seek absolution. When they finally admit their love, it is not euphoria. It is lucidity. It is not liberation. It is responsibility. They are not celebrating a feeling. They are choosing to pay the price for it. Absolutely outstanding.

Perhaps winter is not a season, but a condition: one in which one lives when wearing a name that is not one's own. In the beginning, everything stems from a stolen identity, from survival built on deception. In the end, what remains is not melted snow, but the nakedness of a choice. It is not fate that changes characters: it is responsibility.

“That Winter, the Wind Blows” does not simply tell the story of an impossible love that becomes possible. It describes the moment when a man stops pretending to be someone else and finally becomes himself. And if spring arrives, it is not a miracle: it is the price paid for getting through that winter without hiding anymore.
9/10

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"I heard it through the grapevine (and I saw the photo too)."

Skillfully navigating the territory of workplace rom-coms, “Filing for Love” reveals its narrative maturity by gradually moving beyond the genre and its familiar simplifications to explore a far more complex reality: a working environment where surveillance, intrusion into private life, relentless competition, and the cult of productivity ultimately reshape even human relationships. Beneath its romantic dynamics and the inevitable conventions of the genre lies a surprisingly bitter reflection on contemporary loneliness, burnout, professional alienation, and the price many people are forced to pay when work ceases to be merely a part of life and becomes its absolute center.

Through Team 3, seemingly relegated to the margins of the corporate hierarchy and tasked with handling the company's most uncomfortable and embarrassing issues, “Filing for Love” constructs a remarkably meaningful microcosm. The investigations that shape the first half of the story portray an environment in which work invades every aspect of existence, gradually transforming Haemu into a kind of city-state where people live, love, betray, and suffer almost exclusively within its boundaries.

While the first half of “Filing for Love” seems primarily concerned with the more intimate implications of work—surveillance, workplace relationships, burnout, loneliness, and the struggle to balance professional and personal life—the second half gradually broadens its scope, evolving into something close to a corporate political drama. Succession battles, reputation management, media pressure, and corporate restructuring become the natural extension of a theme that had been present from the very beginning: the company as a totalizing system, capable of extending its influence far beyond the workplace and permeating every aspect of individual existence.

Another interesting aspect of “Filing for Love” lies in its decision to subvert one of the most established dynamics of Korean workplace rom-coms. While the genre has accustomed viewers to the powerful CEO and the subordinate employee, the series instead places a woman in a position of authority, with the men around her forced to navigate that reality. The drama, however, carefully avoids reducing this choice to a simple reversal of roles. Its real interest seems to lie in the dynamics generated by power itself, regardless of the gender of the person who holds it.
When a relationship develops within a hierarchical structure in which one person has the authority to transfer, promote, or dismiss the other, the central issue is not whether that person is a man or a woman, but the imbalance of power that inevitably emerges. It is within this delicate equilibrium that Joo In-ah takes shape as one of the most compelling and well-realized characters in the entire series.

Joo In-ah (played with remarkable depth by the excellent Shin Hae-sun) is arguably the most fascinating character in the entire series. From her very first appearance, she is presented as a feared figure within the Haemu Group: an uncompromising executive, obsessed with rules and seemingly devoid of empathy. Yet, episode after episode, “Filing for Love” patiently dismantles this initial perception. In-ah is neither a moralist nor a cynic in the traditional sense of the term; rather, she is a radically pragmatic woman, accustomed to viewing the world through the lens of consequences and responsibilities.

Behind the feared executive, however, emerges a deeply lonely woman who lives an almost ascetic existence, accepts being misunderstood in order to carry out her work according to her own principles, and has turned isolation into a form of self-preservation. It is no coincidence that one of the most revealing aspects of her character emerges through her relationship with art. The woman who spends her days hidden behind regulations, disciplinary procedures, and an intimidating reputation chooses to expose herself in the most vulnerable way possible by posing as a model for an art class.

It is precisely this tension between strength and fragility, control and the need for understanding, that makes Joo In-ah one of the drama's most compelling characters. Her journey is not about learning to be strong—she has always been strong—but about gradually lowering her defenses and allowing herself the possibility of finally being seen for who she truly is.

No Ki-joon (portrayed with considerable charm by Gong Myoung) initially embodies the archetype of the perfect employee: capable, well-liked, efficient, and seemingly destined for a successful career. The series, however, quickly dismantles this surface image by exposing the vulnerabilities hidden behind the company's so-called "golden boy." His transfer to Team 3 marks the beginning of a profound identity crisis. Ki-joon has built much of his self-worth on professional achievement and the recognition he receives within the company, to the point where he can no longer distinguish between what he does and who he is. Through his character, “Filing for Love” explores one of the most insidious consequences of performance-driven culture: the risk of reducing one's identity to a professional role and gradually losing any sense of self beyond it.

Unlike many male protagonists in the genre, Ki-joon is not defined by his social status or his ability to wield power over others. His journey is instead that of a person who gradually learns to look beyond appearances, abandoning hasty judgments and preconceived notions. It is this willingness to constantly question his own assumptions that ultimately becomes his most defining quality throughout the story.

Jae-yeol (Kim Jae-young, delivering a measured performance perfectly suited to the role) is arguably the most tragic character in the entire series. In a more conventional drama, he would have been the classic second male lead destined to stand in the way of the main couple. Filing For Love, however, takes a far more interesting approach, turning him into a deeply human and melancholic figure. Every aspect of his life seems marked by a different form of deprivation: a strained relationship with a father who never considers him good enough, his mother's illness, a marriage shaped more by strategic interests than genuine affection, A-jeong's unrequited love, and, above all, his unresolved bond with In-ah.

More than an antagonist, Jae-yeol comes across as a man trapped within expectations that others have created for him. Heir, son, husband, executive: every role is imposed upon him before he has the chance to choose it for himself. Even his relationship with In-ah seems to belong more to the realm of regret and unresolved memories than to any genuine possibility in the present. In this sense, the character comes to embody one of the drama's most bittersweet ideas: success, power, and privilege do not necessarily guarantee freedom. On the contrary, they can become a cage just as suffocating as any other.

His character arc is particularly effective because the drama gradually abandons the idea of using him merely as a source of romantic tension. As the story progresses, Jae-yeol ceases to be an obstacle between the protagonists and instead becomes a symbol of everything In-ah and Ki-joon are trying to avoid: a life shaped by duty, compromise, and resignation. His personal journey ultimately takes on the contours of a quiet tragedy, one that inspires far more compassion than hostility.

A special mention should also go to A-jeong (Hong Hwa Yeon), a character the series uses to explore yet another form of loneliness and inadequacy. Ki-joon's former girlfriend and hopelessly in love with Jae-yeol, she lives constantly in the shadow of relationships that never achieve true reciprocity. Her desire to be seen and acknowledged is further complicated by a clear sense of inferiority toward In-ah, whom she perceives as unattainable both professionally and romantically. More than an antagonist, A-jeong remains the portrait of a person desperately searching for attention and belonging, enriching the broader mosaic of emotional fragility that runs throughout the series.

Through its protagonists, the series finds its most authentic voice. Beneath the romantic dynamics and the inevitable conventions of the genre, “Filing for Love” ultimately reveals itself as a story about individuals searching for a place to belong: Ki-joon seeks recognition and validation, In-ah a sense of peace that always seems just out of reach, Jae-yeol a form of legitimacy beyond the role imposed upon him by his family, and A-jeong a love that might finally be returned. Even its lightest and most entertaining moments rest upon a surprisingly bitter reality shaped by burnout, social pressure, isolation, and professional identities that gradually come to overshadow personal ones.

One of Filing for Love's greatest strengths lies in the way it develops the relationship between its two protagonists. Their romance is not born from immediate attraction or romantic destiny, but from a gradual process of mutual understanding and the slow abandonment of preconceived judgments. In the early episodes, Ki-joon sees In-ah much as everyone else at Haemu does: as a cold, uncompromising, and almost inhuman woman. His initial investigation into her affairs is driven by a desire to expose her, to find proof that something darker lies behind that carefully controlled façade. Yet the closer he gets to her, the more he discovers the exact opposite: a deeply lonely person, willing to endure the misunderstanding and resentment of others in order to do what she believes is right.

The drama charts this transformation through a series of subtle shifts in perspective. At first, Ki-joon watches In-ah in order to expose her; later, he watches her in order to understand her; eventually, he watches her because he is drawn to her.
Viewed in this light, the portrait Ki-joon creates carries far greater significance than the first kiss or any of the drama's more overtly romantic moments. If the paper clip symbolizes the birth of complicity, the portrait marks the birth of love.

For the first time, Ki-joon does not merely desire In-ah—he truly sees her, offering her a reflection of herself freed from the defenses behind which she has hidden for years. This is not a story of conquest, but one of mutual recognition: the story of a woman who has learned to live behind a suit of armor and a man who, little by little, stops looking at the armor and finally begins to see the person beneath it.

In this sense, “Filing for Love” is not truly a workplace rom-com, but a series about loneliness that uses the rom-com format as its narrative vehicle. Love is not presented as the culmination of one's existence or as a simple romantic reward, but rather as the possibility of escaping, if only for a moment, the structural loneliness generated by a system that measures a person's worth almost exclusively through productivity.

Just as the series seems to have fully embraced its most distinctive identity, some of its limitations begin to emerge. The ambition that expands the narrative from the microcosm of Team 3 to the internal power struggles of the Haemu Group enriches the story, but also accumulates a number of conflicts and subplots that the finale struggles to handle with the same care displayed earlier on. A certain repetitiveness in some of the investigative storylines, along with a few more conventional romantic detours, foreshadows a conclusion that resolves several of its most compelling tensions a little too quickly. More than the resolutions themselves, what leaves some room for reservation is the limited attention given to their aftermath.

Without reaching the excellence of the very best Korean workplace rom-coms, and despite a finale that simplifies and accelerates many of the tensions carefully built up along the way, “Filing for Love” remains a series that stands out for its thematic maturity, the quality of its character writing, and its ability to use romance as a vehicle for exploring something broader and more universal. It does not always fulfill every promise it makes throughout its journey, yet its reflection on contemporary loneliness, professional identity, and the need for belonging retains a sincerity that is rare within the genre. The journey does not always lead to the most satisfying destinations, but it remains far more interesting than most of the paths offered by traditional workplace rom-coms.

7½

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If I leave you, it doesn't mean I love you any less / Keep me in your heart for a while

Within the diverse landscape of Korean dramas, it is not uncommon to come across stories that raise profound questions about choices, responsibility, and the limits of human action. "Mary Kills People" fits within this tradition with a particularly delicate approach, asking the viewer not only to understand what is being told, but first and foremost to accept its premise.

Addressing a subject like euthanasia — and doing so within a complex cultural context inevitably shaped by personal, ethical, and religious sensibilities — means moving across fragile ground, where a neutral perspective is difficult to sustain. Every viewer brings their own experiences and beliefs, and the show seems aware of this, creating a narrative space where judgment is not imposed, but rather suspended.

Its premise is as solid as it is unsettling: a team that organizes the deaths of terminally ill patients according to precise, almost clinical criteria, attempting to give them a sense of control over their own fate. For this mechanism to work, however, the narrative requires a preliminary step from the audience: to accept — or at least consider — the legitimacy of this premise. This is far from a given, and it is precisely here that one of the central tensions of the story emerges. "Mary Kills People" constantly oscillates between the desire to observe this choice with clarity and the need to justify it, contain it, and at times even protect it.

When the focus shifts to people rather than cases, the drama finds its most authentic voice. So-jeong’s past, Dae-hyun’s journey, the bond between Ye-na and Gun-soo, as well as the quiet suffering of patients and their families, are moments where the narrative stops trying to prove something and simply observes. It is in these passages that the most powerful questions arise — what it truly means to suffer beyond endurance, what it means to accompany someone to the end, whether a choice can ever be truly free under extreme conditions — without the need to provide definitive answers. In these moments, the show feels more sincere, more engaging, and at times deeply moving.

At the same time, however, the drama does not seem to fully trust this dimension. As the episodes progress, the narrative expands and becomes increasingly layered: ethical reflection is joined by investigative threads, criminal elements, blackmail, and shifting alliances, along with subplots that, while interesting on their own, contribute to shifting the story’s center of gravity. The transition is subtle but noticeable: from “why” to “how,” from moral dilemma to narrative mechanics, from reflection to tension. The result is not so much a loss of interest as a dispersion of identity.

And yet, within this movement lies one of the most interesting paradoxes of the show: the higher the stakes become, the further it seems to drift from what makes it distinctive. The most effective moments are not those built on spectacle, but those grounded in simplicity — a conversation, a farewell, a shared moment. It is there that the drama moves beyond its narrative structure and becomes something more intimate, almost experiential.

So-jeong’s journey (brought to life by an intense and consistently excellent Lee Bo-young) fits perfectly within this ambiguity. She is never entirely readable, nor easily defined. Her choices seem to move between conviction, guilt, and a need for control, and the story suggests — without ever stating it outright — that her perspective is deeply rooted in an unresolved personal trauma. This makes each decision more human, but also more fragile, calling into question the very idea of a neutral or universal moral stance.

The final episodes make this dual nature particularly clear. Episode eleven builds toward a possible resolution, bringing many narrative threads to a close and restoring a sense of balance, while still leaving room for doubt. Episode twelve, on the other hand, reopens the discourse, introducing new elements and directions that look beyond the conclusion itself. It is less a cliffhanger than a deliberate choice — a refusal to truly end. Yet this decision ultimately softens the impact of what had just been achieved, as if the drama preferred to preserve the possibility of continuation rather than pause for reflection.

In the end, "Mary Kills People" proves to be an engaging and often compelling work, capable at times of striking deeply emotional chords. At the same time, it feels like a story that never fully trusts its own central idea. In trying to broaden its scope, it enriches and complicates the narrative, but in doing so, it disperses part of its strength. And yet, when it slows down — when it truly listens to its characters — it manages to offer something rare.

More than providing answers, the drama places the viewer before a choice: not so much what to think, but from which perspective to look. And perhaps it is precisely in this suspension, rather than in any definitive stance, that its most authentic value lies.

7/10

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“You’re weighing the gold, I’m watching you sink... Fool’s gold.”

"Undercover High School" fits into the landscape of Korean dramas as a cross-over production, blending thriller, mystery, and school dynamics within a narrative structure that, at times, resembles a full-fledged “treasure hunt.” From the very beginning, the series establishes an intriguing framework, built on a suggestive setting and an immediately engaging premise: an undercover agent navigating the corridors of an elite high school, surrounded by social hierarchies, hidden secrets, and clues scattered like pieces of a game, in search of a legendary hoard of gold bars.

One of the drama’s strongest elements lies in the construction of its narrative architecture, which cleverly transforms the school environment into a quasi-labyrinthine space. Classrooms, corridors, abandoned buildings, and hidden rooms become integral parts of a path shaped by riddles, symbols, and ghost-like stories, all intertwined with the search for a hidden treasure. This almost playful dimension—reminiscent of a gamified narrative—helps create a distinctive and immersive atmosphere, sustaining the viewer’s curiosity and giving the story a dynamic rhythm suspended between mystery, tension, and discovery.

The strength of "Undercover High School" also lies in its genre contamination, skillfully alternating moments of tension with lighter interludes without losing, at least in its best moments, its sense of entertainment. Thriller, mystery, hints of teen drama, and comedic elements coexist within a structure that prioritizes pacing and accessibility, making it enjoyable for a wide audience.

Within this framework, the school setting is not merely a backdrop, but also introduces a subtle reading of the social dynamics at play: the divide between privileged students and those from more vulnerable backgrounds, internal power structures, and tensions related to recognition and belonging all find their place in the narrative. The theme of bullying is also present, handled with a degree of attention that, while not deeply analytical, remains effective in highlighting some of the environment’s underlying issues.

However, it is precisely this constant oscillation between tones that reveals some of the series’ main weaknesses. While the variety keeps the narrative lively and never static, the uneven balance between genres occasionally leads to tonal dissonance, with comedic moments sometimes undermining the impact of more tense or dramatic sequences.

A key factor supporting the entire structure is a solid and well-balanced cast, capable of lending credibility even to the more conventional turns of the script. Seo Kang-joon, as protagonist Jeong Hae-seong, stands at the center of the story and manages, with surprising ease, to make believable a character caught between two identities, playing self-consciously with genre clichés. Despite portraying an adult agent posing as a student, he skillfully adjusts his physicality, tone, and presence with a touch of self-irony, making the transition between adult and teenage dimensions convincing—at least within the logic of the narrative.

Alongside him, Jin Ki-joo delivers a grounded and progressively more central performance, accompanying the story with a believable and organic emotional growth. Her character begins on lighter notes before gradually gaining depth and awareness, helping to stabilize the tone in the more mature phases of the drama.

Standing out most, however, is Kim Shin-rok as Seo Myeong-ju, a charismatic antagonist initially defined by a cold and calculated control that makes her a commanding presence. Although her characterization tends to lose some consistency in the latter part of the series, she remains one of the most compelling figures in the drama. Similarly, Lee Ye-na (Kim Min-ju) offers one of the most effective character arcs, evolving beyond a potentially stereotypical role into a more nuanced and emotionally credible presence.

Overall, while the characters often operate within familiar boundaries and recognizable tropes, the cast succeeds in elevating the material, aided by a natural sense of charm and chemistry that significantly contributes to the show’s appeal and its ability to maintain viewer engagement.

Alongside its strengths, "Undercover High School" presents several flaws that partially limit its overall effectiveness. The episode length and uneven pacing result in an imbalanced distribution of content, alternating dense segments with more diluted ones. Additionally, tonal inconsistency remains an issue: while the comedic component works in certain moments, it can feel excessive or poorly integrated in others, diminishing the impact of more serious scenes.

In this regard, some secondary characterizations—particularly those related to the NIS team—while intended to provide levity, occasionally come across as redundant and not entirely aligned with the tone of the scenes they inhabit. Furthermore, certain narrative shortcuts and underdeveloped passages suggest a script that is not always attentive to detail or to the weight of its consequences. These elements do not significantly hinder the viewing experience, but they prevent the series from achieving greater cohesion and sharpness.

For its finale, Undercover High School opts for the safest route: it ties together all narrative threads, resolves conflicts, and delivers a conclusion that is orderly and satisfying, yet lacking in boldness. Consistent with a story that has always oscillated between genres, the series avoids taking risks, favoring a reassuring ending that rewards its characters without truly pushing them to their limits.

The result is a solid and enjoyable drama, capable of entertaining and engaging thanks to a strong cast and an effective concept, but one that rarely manages to fully realize its potential into something more impactful and memorable. A series that is easy to watch and appreciate, but unlikely to leave a lasting impression.

7 ½

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Bikini Girl with Fairway Woods

When 'A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness' was released in 1977, Seijun Suzuki returned to feature filmmaking after nearly a decade of forced absence, following his infamous dismissal from Nikkatsu in the wake of 'Branded to Kill'. Officially, the reason given was the alleged “incomprehensibility” of his work; in reality, it marked the breaking point between an increasingly radical auteur and an industrial system no longer able (or willing) to contain him.

At first glance, the film appears to move within a controlled and almost conventional framework — the world of golf, advertising, and media construction — where even the language itself seems borrowed from slogans and performance coaching. “Chance for a birdie,” we are told: a promise of precision, control, and success. Yet, as the film unfolds, that promise gradually reveals its darker implications.

The story of Reiko Sakuraba — a promising golfer turned into a carefully engineered media personality — unfolds as a precise study of manufactured identity. She is not simply an athlete, but a constructed image: shaped, refined, and deployed within a system that regulates not only her public presence, but increasingly her private existence as well.

At first, the narrative seems to follow a familiar trajectory — discovery, promotion, consolidation — but Suzuki gradually undermines this structure by introducing a destabilizing force that does not originate within the system itself, but from its most unsettling byproduct: the audience.

Kayo Semba, the obsessive fan, is not merely an antagonist. She is, in fact, the logical outcome of the very process that created Reiko. If an image is designed to be desired, internalized, and reproduced, then it becomes almost inevitable that someone will attempt to inhabit it — to replace, rather than simply admire, the figure it represents.

From this point onward, the film undergoes a decisive shift. Narrative progression gives way to a more ambiguous, disquieting flow, where the boundaries between public and private, performance and authenticity, begin to collapse. The intrusion into domestic space, the escalation of psychological pressure, and the gradual erosion of Reiko’s autonomy do not lead to a dramatic breakdown in the conventional sense, but to something far more insidious: a slow dissolution.

Reiko does not explode, nor does she openly resist. Instead, she empties out. She becomes a surface upon which external forces act — an image that no longer belongs to her. In this sense, the movie feels strikingly modern, anticipating dynamics that today appear almost commonplace: the commodification of the body, the fabrication of identity, and the invasive nature of public attention.

At the same time, the system that produced all this remains fundamentally intact. Even as events spiral into increasingly disturbing territory, the machinery of promotion, contracts, and media exposure continues to operate, ready to adapt, replace, and move forward. Within this framework, the figure of Miyake — manipulative, pragmatic, yet never overtly monstrous — functions less as a villain than as an integral component of the system itself.

Stylistically, while more restrained than his earlier works, Suzuki’s signature remains unmistakable. His use of space, the fragmented pacing, and the subtle but persistent dissonance between what is shown and what is implied all contribute to an atmosphere of controlled instability. The film seems constantly on the verge of rupture, yet never fully collapses.

The result is a work that resists easy categorization — neither fully commercial nor overtly experimental — but precisely for this reason deeply coherent within Suzuki’s artistic trajectory. This is not a conciliatory return, nor an attempt to realign with industry expectations; rather, it is a lucid and quietly devastating reflection on what that system produces: not only images, but desires, projections, and distortions.

'A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness' it’s not so much the story of a celebrity's downfall as the process by which a person gradually ceases to belong to themselves, becoming a canvas for others' projections.
And after that, the descent is irreversible.

8/10

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Ghost In The Machine / I Bury The Living (?)

A jealousy and cuckolded husband “kills” his wife and then, in a macabre farce, carries her around in a hearse to extort money from her former lovers, but not everything is as it seems...

1964 was a remarkable year, which saw the release of this curious work by Hajime Sato:
It came after the untimely death of the master Ozu (which, incidentally, also coincided with the retirement from the screen of the extraordinary Setsuko Hara) and the release of interesting works that, curiously, also arrived in Italy:
Among the many, Teshigahara’s beautiful “Woman In The Dunes” (often shown on TV) as well as Suzuki's “The Flower And The Angry Waves” and “Gate Of Flesh” (among my favourites by the master), Masumura's ‘Manji’ (another personal favourite of mine), Shindo Kaneto's ‘Onibaba’, as well as works by Imamura, Honda, Shinoda, Naruse (who has been criminally ignored here for decades!) etc.

‘Sanpo Suru Reikyusha’ by Sato, known internationally as ‘The Glamorous Ghost’, also arrives in Italy but is released with a completely different title (a practice that is, alas, widely abused...) and becomes, for some reason, ‘L’ Amore scotta a Yokohama’, something like ‘Love Burns in Yokohama’…
But why, as many have pointed out, is the action set in Tokyo, what does Yokohama have to do with it?
Who knows!

Although difficult to categorise, but well analysed on various websites that have discussed it over the years, the movie can be considered a black comedy with a grotesque atmosphere, with decidedly surreal touches and some concessions to the macabre that place it, with considerable freedom, in the so-called “Ero guro” genre, with all that this entails…

Decidedly ambiguous in structure and morally cruel in its portrayal of the characters—all of whom are deeply unlikeable—the film truly seems like an allegory, or rather, as is often the case in many works from the Land of the Rising Sun, a parable about the destructive power of money which, when all is said and done, always leads to ruin due to greed and cupidity.

One of the film's greatest strengths is its ability to bring out the worst traits in all of its characters, who are largely devoid of humanity and feelings, driven by the murkiest of impulses, greed for wealth, coldfinancial calculation and abuse of power, taken to the extreme.

If the characterisation of the taxi driver husband (Kō Nishimura, with his extraordinary career) is a mediocre figure, lacking in scruples and moral integrity, ready to adapt and exploit the various twists and turns of the situation, he does not present any positive characteristics, his wife (Masumi Harukawa, also a veteran actress) is no less impressive, a treacherous double-crosser who coldly and lucidly exploits her (arguably questionable) attractiveness not for exclusive physical satisfaction, but purely for the desire to get rich...

And the supporting figures who gradually appear throughout the story are no less (obnoxiously) remarkable.

A grotesque comedy of errors, ‘The Glamorous Ghost’ inevitably ends up being compared to ‘The Comedy of Terrors’, one of the last movies by the great Jacques Tourneur, which coincidentally came out just a year earlier. Tourneur’s movie, it must be said, is certainly not unforgettable, revealing its main strength in its excellent and entertaining cast.

This work by Sato, a director perhaps hastily placed in marginal categories of Japanese cinema, on the contrary, thanks to remarkable black and white photography that increases the contrasts between light and shadow, contributing to amplifying the caricatural effect on the characters, his skewed, distorting shots, and moments of amusing surreal comedy (such as the trips in the hearse and the visit to the morgue with all the corpses awaiting burial) is still appreciated today, thanks to its somewhat macabre, undoubtedly unconventional taste, which may not be to everyone's liking, but certainly a faithful reflection of contemporary society, where everything seems to be driven by money and selfishness and where no redemption seems possible, as can also be inferred from the mockingly ironic ending.
7

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You Must Be a Witch...

Very high expectations supported by a result that is not entirely satisfying, for this 'Bitter Sweet Hell', a reasonably good but not outstanding drama, capable of starting off in a very solid and engaging manner, but, as frequently happens in contemporary productions, able to end up losing a little focus in the development of the plot.

Beyond the personal taste interpretation of the genre (it is definitely bold to consider BSH a generic 'black comedy'), the drama can comfortably be placed in the context of a family-based thriller, accompanied by the now overused theme of revenge linked to past events, where it is precisely the concept of family, in its multiple aspects, that provides the best key to interpretation and analysis.

Beginning as a phenomenological study of a typical upper-class Korean family (I imagine belonging to that famous 1% often depicted in dramas), 'Bitter Sweet Hell' has the merit of highlighting a harsh analysis of the family institution, highlighting through the failure of marriage, the dramatic and in many ways impossible ability concerning the proper management of interpersonal relationships within the same family unit.

That all this originates through the external factor of the criminal element of the plot, the notorious 'Witch', a sort of puppet master, capable of pulling the strings at his own sadistic will, is certainly one of the most interesting aspects in the development of the story.

The perfect, idyllic, but utterly fake and insincere portrayal of the family unit reveals all its fragility when the death of the patriarch (the always excellent Kwon Hae-hyo, also sacrified for plot exigencies), opens the infamous Pandora's box on the private vices and sins of the various family members...

The carnage game that ensues leads Dr. No, an eminent psychiatrist with a TV programme affiliated with her, to vacillate over the truth behind her own father's death, her father-in-law's responsibility and, at the same time, the mysterious disappearance of her own husband, the famous surgeon Choi Jae Jin.

Faced with the collapse of her certainties, purely selfish doubts about her own career, the resulting social status quo, and the safety/protection of her son (holder of an unmentionable secret), Dr No will even have to confront her mother-in-law, the famous mystery novelist Hong Sa Gang ('Cigarette Queen'), a lover of Agatha Christie and not at all resigned to the risk of a veritable media pillory capable of demolishing the few certainties left in the family...

The confrontation/clash between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law gives us the most enjoyable moments of the drama, thanks to the two prima donnas, perfectly placed in their roles; if Kim Hee Sun may seem a little more conservative with an extremely measured style (but she is just great style, as always, even if in the ending she literally loosens the reins as a mother bear protecting her cub) , in the intense performance of the always remarkable Lee Hye Young, we can really appreciate the ultimate feeling of the story, thanks also to a clever use of explicative flashbacks that add meat to the fire, enriching the plot and leading us to understand the sincere love of the novelist for her family, obviously impossible to explain in words, but comprehensible through the pages of books...

The moments in the whole part concerning the search for the husband/son Choi Jae Jin are very well presented, thanks also to the contribution of Park Kang Sung in the role of Ahn Kil Kang, handyman in the service of the novelist and manager of the 'Soft Hands' restaurant; the characterisation of Kim Nam Hee in the role of a genuine pusillanimous, only partly justified by the personal revelation about his origins, is very well done...

Among the drama's negative aspects, which unfortunately affect the final result quite a bit, I have to place the "Wicked" Lee Se Na, played by an inadequate Yeonwoo, in my opinion (it's always a personal thing, specific!) incapable of portraying a memorable villain, commensurate with the story;
if the explanation on the origin of Se Na's evil is decidedly conventional, even less is made clear as to how she could have circuited and manipulated more or less all the men (there is talk of three husbands, several lovers and even some women) in her revenge intentions;
The head tilt and a mocking glance are not enough to define evil, and the last two episodes, with the usual incongruities in the script and the obvious narrative strains, the sudden 'illuminations' capable of giving the drama a decisive turn, suffer greatly from this serious weakness (or casting error, to my way of thinking), dragging the story towards a rather predictable and even not very courageous ending.

Much, much better is the character of Moon Tae Oh (played by Jung Gun Joo) in the role of the main actors' son's tutor; in his case the roots of the evil are fully justified by deriving family faults and therefore deserving of a justified process of recovery, of 'salvation and redemption', unlike Se Na who, perversely guilty, as a pure 'witch' will meet her just fate....

Interesting is the role of Dr Oh Ji Eun (played by Shin So Yool), hopelessly in love, in search of familial acceptance and a victim in spite of herself of adult scheming and insensitivity...
Lee Se Na, Moon Tae Oh and Dr Oh herself represent in different ways three aspects of a family laceration with devastating consequences, irreparable in Se Na's case.

Vice versa, for the main character family, there can be a chance of redemption and new awareness through mutual solidarity, the ability to listen and understand, the principle of 'acceptance'; exemplary from this point of view is the role of the whole family towards the existential condition of their son Do Hyun (portrayed by a sincere and very human Park Jae-chan), and the appeal, albeit painful but necessary, towards memories (through letters, photographs, footage)

The pursuit of dialogue, sitting around the table, even if only to eat together once in a while, may seem a simple or obvious message, but it can be seen as a curative approach... From this point of view, the conclusion, although overly conciliatory, is quite in line with the development.

To sum up, in my personal opinion, 'Bitter Sweet Hell' is a good drama that lacks a bit of solidity in the second half, but is sustained by an almost completely successful cast and that has the virtue of not going on for too long; I would even have appreciated a couple more episodes to highlight the role of the novelist a bit more concretely, especially in her tormented relationship with her husband, but that's OK;

In some sections, I found several points of contact with the contemporaneous 'Hide' (which is however more reliable on the complex) with which, curiously enough, it shares the location of the holiday residence, the scene of adultery in one case and of crimes in the other...
Personal side note: Hong Sa Gang's car is absolutely awesome!

7/10

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