LykeItRuff

I found the reason behind her plottings to be silly and cheesy.

It felt like about 50 other Hollywood thrillers I've seen with Korean actors inserted as appropriate. Pretty cheesy plot and most things were predictable, but it wasn't horrible. The ML and FL are good actors and both did their best with the hole-ridden script they were handed. Old mom and daughter(?) were well-cast, as there is a resemblance. Watch it if you want, but I won't force you. If you don't you won't miss much.

Regarding the kissing...as nice as it was to see the truth is that as a reflection of reality this form or romantic expression is only now reaching the point in K-BLs where it should have been to begin with. Also, what we saw was quite chaste and reserved, though you could definitely feel the heat building. Most important is that given the continued homophobic and conservative nature of Korean cultue, we recognize it is brave of these young actors to forge ahead and do what actors do. Bravo!

It's true, we are all adorable, wide-eyed teddy bears.

No harm in comparing and contrasting, like you just did. We can learn a lot that way.

what does "throw hands at" mean?

Oh, he knows. Being willing to admit it? That's another step...

"not exactly for young audiences, is it?" Are you for real? Young people, even kids, know and are aware of, SO MUCH MORE than adults give them credit for. I can't believe you are referring to this show as "pink," other than in reference to the set designs which are far too pastel and fake looking. It's as if the show were filmed in a furniture store. Have you ever seen "Sodom's Cat?" THAT is a "pink" show.

Furthermore, "strangling," really? Did we even see TS' hand move to the throat or was it only when the action shot switched to the mother's perspective? I remember being surprised by where his hand was because it wasn't there a second ago. Either way, look up the definition of "strangling." Do you think TS was trying to KILL HB? Or did he get passionate and lose control for a few seconds, which is all it was. He was then full of apologies the next morning. What more do you want, J100? Caning? Should the mom call the police? After all, it was technically a "sexual assault!!" Horrors! Throw him in jail for five years!

I too though it strange the mother said nothing to TS the next morning at breakfast when HB wasnt' there. Would have been the perfect time. And it would have had to take only a few seconds: "I don't know exactly what last night's display was all about, but I don't EVER want to see you treating anyone that way again, especially HB." Then off to work she goes. Or, of course, she could hire a team of psychologists, SJW sexual ethics teachers and a private investigator to put him through a ten-week re-education program...that too would be an option.

My reaction to Cherry Blossoms can be summed up by the fact that I am sobbing into a hand towel, having just finished episode 5. :)

I realized early on in this ep that this BL is one of the few that have touched me this deeply in a while, despite its small shortcomings. I was reminded of when I first found BL and was soaking up the series one by one, rapid-fire. I could binge all of them because they had all already been released long ago. Frequently, during the better ones I would tear up, get goose-bumps for no specific reason having to do with a line of dialogue or an action of a character, but the sheer sweetness/joy/intense feels of beiing an adolescent or teen boy falling/being in love with another boy. I spent my entire first 37 years of life suppressing those feelings. When I saw them on screen it was as though I was being allowed to experience my OWN version of what might have been at that time in my life. That powerful emotion, having nowhere to go, naturally spilled out of my eyes and raised itself on the surface of my skin.

Thus it is that Cherry Blossoms, in some scenes, captures and reflects those feelings again and I spent this episode in various stages of tears and goosebumps. This is a tribute to the leads' chemistry and acting. They are so sweet together and the chemistry is there. But also the tall one is deeply in love as he has been for a long time, but is more accepting of how he feels and assertive about it being time for them to move forward. HB is more reserved, cautious and afraid of losing his "mother," or in common BL-speak, "disappointing" her. So in scenes where the love between them was palpable and the issues felt real I was overwhelmed with the emotion I wrote of above. ESPECIALLY at the beginning of the dream sequence you mentioned. As soon as they moved to kiss the tears flowed; it's entirely spontaneous. I hoped for a full-blown love scene, started to worry that they'd left the door open and mom would walk in, then thought "oh shit, this has got to be a dream," and sure enough, it was. :(

Things I loved about this ep:
Chemistry
Eye contact/HB's eyes darting away when his beloved catches him staring
The tall one's eagerness to be kind and considerate of HB, but also to honor their affections and fight for them
The tall one's assertiveness (loved when he backed HB against the wall by the wrists. I heard the SJWs shrieking.
The tall one's backing off/not being resentful
HB's willingness to be brave
The mom's relative willingness to let whatever she sees going on just be for now, to not assume things and make a scene, and through that behavior register her trust and love for both of them.

Things I didn't like:
Predictable things like HB's (the bottom of course) hesitancy and 180 turn when things begin to reveal themselves
The trope of the bottom falling into a fever because he was forced against the wall by an aggessive man with a boner. Why not go all-out and have him collapse onto a fainting couch?
The unsubtle move to soft-focus when they started kissing
The hammer on the head music designed to cue the audience to feel things they are already feeling
There were two or three other tropes I can't recall but that irritated me when they popped up. What are these lazy-ass directors thinking when they repeat something like that for the thousandth time in BLs?

This is one of the few BLs I watch the intro credits for. I like the song, but more so I like the visuals. There are a few seconds where the tall one is shown in a hoodie and sweatpants running in slo-mo as he rounds the intersection of a couple of sidewalks and begins to come toward the camera. I have no idea what it is, he is not even looking at the camera, but something in his body language, movement and facial expression moves me to tears every time. I think it inspires the idea that he is running to share something important with HB about something he has just learned of, or been warned about something about to happen and is racing to prevent it or warn HB. I don't know, I guess something in that small sequence is heroic to me. He looks tall, lean, athletic, yet graceful and elegant too. I just love that image. It should be on one of the CBIW posters.

Shit. I just read Leslie Cheung's bio and am heartbroken at his choice to leave the world at his own hand, as have FAR too many unspeakably talented/gifted/genius-level artists, performers, writers, actors, singers, creative people of every stripe. Along with the highly sensitive nature that many creatives are both blessed and afflicted with, it is not surprising that depression was a part of his life. So fucking tragic that he was not successfully treated and helped to find his way out of that irrational but very real black pit of despair that is clinical depression. God speed, Leslie. Thank you for this beautiful movie. I can't wait to check out your music too. God bless.

Wow. I have put off watching this movie for years and I don't even know why. But I finally did and just watched the credits. I'm speechless. It is so different and more than I somehow imagined it would be. Loved the way the story of the three leads was entwined with the course of history in China. My god, that "cultural revolution," which I vaguely heard of as a child since it was happening right then, was monstrous. Even more so given the speed of its implementation. A reign of terror.

I'm looking forward to reading a lot more about this film and then watching it again. I'm sure I will absorb a ton of details and background I missed the first time, what with so much going on.

Being me, naturally at first I disliked the FL's character as I felt she would keep my boys apart. But she turned out to be the most kind and decent of the three. What a nightmare.

The sets, costumes, choreography, crowd scenes, cinematography, direction, acting was all stellar. I often marveled at all that was going on in the outdoor street scenes; all sorts of very realistic activity in the background from all the extras. Just amazing. Not sure why, but at this point my favorite part of the film was the first third, when they were children and then teens in that horrific theatrical/operatic training school. Jesus. Such a powerful dichotomy of horrendous abuse and humor. The child actors were stunning.

I know it's a cultural and generational thing, but I will be honest and say the operatic "singing/speaking" thing is like ten-inch fingernails on a chalkboard to me. But it is not nearly as bad as a YT video I watched of the Chinese State Opera or whatever it's called doing their communist opera schtick that arose at the end of this film. It is ten times worse than in this film. omg...I can't believe people, I guess, thought that sounded great. I'm interested to look into what sort of opera and upper-end concert music is common in China now.

9/10 from me. I can easily see why I've been hearing about this film for nearly 30 years.

Thankyou! No need for "sorry." The more lingo I pick up the better. I've learned a lot of film-business initials since I started out here. I figure why not go ahead and ask rather than pretending I know what the hell everyone is talking about when I haven't a clue? :)

Interesting. I DID buy PSW's gay feelings as authentic, just too-rapidly developed to seem real. I thought he "played gay" (lol, especially in the make-out scenes) very well but the character got there so quickly it was not believable. He should have lost more weight for the part too. He supposedly got in shape as an athletic runner for the part, but was pretty roly-poly around the middle in his shirtless scenes. You might have noticed the camera stayed above mid-torso level when aimed at him. :) Where was his Method system when it came to the physical preparedness?

I could have loved it if it had been done well. I like the idea at its center. But boy was it silly and rushed and sloppy, with too much cliche stalker stuff going on, including the desperate, pathetic wife/GF who stalked her lover online and all the way to the beach. Pathetic. It could have been a thrilling and tense slow-burn psychological thriller but went with the easy, well-trodden path.

Hmmm...where did you catch that he has done this with "all his romantic leads?" You may be right but I missed that bit of dialogue if it exists. Regardless, to say this plot has NOTHING to do with sexual orientation is silly. If you are 100% straight, using the Method system in a play in which you portray a gay man is NOT going to cause you to develop actual homosexual feelings. There has got to be some latent homosexual potential there to be set loose. To say otherwise is to credit the Method system with the power to change straight to gay, gay to straight, intelligent to stupid, etc. and that is just silliness.

Method acting, for all the hype, is about becoming a character, not in the literal sense, but in the theoretical sense. Are you saying that a Method actor playing a murderer is going to start skulking the streets at night, killing people? Or one playing a wife-beater will suddenly start slapping his real-life wife around? NO. Any actor that does that has serious mental problems to begin with. Acting is ALWAYS about pretending. The Method is simply one means by which some actors take their on-stage pretense to another, more intense and thorough level.

Why do you keep concentrating on the older actor here? We have a younger co-star who also lost all sense of boundary issues, or walked in with them already gone and planned all this. Either way, the script had all of the big psychological changes take placed at lightning speed, not over the course of a rehearsal period, which would have been much more interesting. This was just another sloppy, psycho/thriller with an implausible concept at its core.

Great idea. Big disappointment.

OF COURSE it's about sexual orientation AS WELL AS method acting. A man who thinks of himself as straight finds himself lusting for a young man, supposedly because of the Method style of acting. But we were shown very little of the Method process, almost none, that supposedly brought about all thsi drama. The only way this could happen is if the actor already had latent gay tendencies, which is entirely possible and plausible.

Why do you have to claim to "understand" a movie as if the rest of us don't? It's just your opinion, after all.

I think it is about both of those things? How can it NOT be about sexual orientation when a man who thinks of himself as straight suddenly develops the hots for someone with a penis? The screenplay is terrible. We saw almost NO method acting techniques in rehearsals, just talk about it. Just because you interpret this one way doesn't mean that's IT.

Really? I thought there was zero tension or build; everything was made clear in 30 minutes. I felt like the writing is the entire problem.

No, no, no, no, no...this was nowhere near the slow-burn, psychological/sexual thriller it could have been. Everything happened way too fast. Within the first half hour the die were cast and there was nowhere for the film to build to. So from there we got a watered-down, Korean/theatrical version of the Hollywood 80s thriller "Fatal Attraction" with Oh Seung Hoon in the Glenn Close role and Park Sung Woong as Michael Douglas. Rather than a slow exposure/revealing/development of taboo feelings as the Method process of acting was applied, BOOM! all the sexual tension, fear and hesitation was over and we were off to silly-ville.

The wife/girlfriend (I wasn't sure) seemed more like the actor's daughter than his lover, in stature, strength and every other way. She figured everything out BOOM! too and I found her annoying as hell. Smothering and stalking is not a proven way to keep your man, especially from a hot K-Pop idol.

7/10