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This review may contain spoilers
Expectations Verse Reality
First let me preface this review by saying that I liked and enjoyed this drama. There were many things that I love(d) about watching this adaptation. Frist and foremost, the performances by Bai Jing Ting and Shang Ruo Nan as Sang Yan and Wen Yi Fan(Wen Shuang Jiang) respectively were amazing and should be praised. Not only did their physical appearance, wardrobe, and over all styling match the characters, but the emotions that they conveyed matched that of Sang Yan and Wen Yi Fan. The only time it didn't match were when the writer-director deviated from the source material for in my opinion, fan service. More on this later in my review.
I liked the balance that was kept throughout the show of both mains' perspectives being shown. There were certain aspects to Sang Yan's character that were sprinkled in early on that would pay off much later in the drama, just like it did in the novel. There were even a few things that they held off on revealing until a bit later in the drama than in the original source material which I feel worked better.
Shang Ruo Nan really understood Wen Yi Fan's shyness, curiosity, hesitance…and her innocence down. A thing that a lot of people seem to forget is that Yi Fan had to grow up very fast, very suddenly. But with that speed run to adulthood she skipped over a lot of other milestones someone in their late teens and early twenties would experience. She only ever got to experience unconditional love from two people, and both left her early. The one left remaining who was supposed to love her unconditionally then made her feel unlovable/unworthy of unconditional love and care. So the slower pace of the drama lent to the slow progression of Yi Fan coming out of her shell.
Only critique I have is that they didn't hire someone who knows ballet to get Shang Ruo Nan's posture down. So imo it doesn't so much fall on the actress, but production. They could have easily used a foot double for close ups and done medium shots with Shang Ruo Nan...which there were many, but she never held her chest or arms correctly for someone trained in en pointe ballet. A real missed opportunity, imo, for showing Wen Yi Fan's inner world would have been showing her breaking in her pointe shoes, showing her mending the last few pairs she was able to get before her mother cut her off. An example of this filming technique can be found in the movie 'Center Stage' if you are a dancer, chances are you know exactly which scene I'm referring to. I don't think you realized how many and and how expensive pointe ballet shoes are. They come in many sizes and variations and it is extremely important to have pairs that fit you. A professional dancer can go through a pair within less than a week. Also one does not simple jump back into en pointe after 6 years of zero dancing...good way to never walk again. her shoes should have looked more worn and shown her personal touch. They felt sterile and like they just came out of a box.
The director is good at filming the darker in mood scenes. So most of the sleepwalking and trauma related flashbacks. The use of light within the apartment was well done. Using softer practical lights to show warmth and a sense of comfort. He also excels at young love/innocent crush type of casual scenes. Their high school flashback scenes were some of the best shot of the entire series. The color grading was ever so slightly different and I preferred his use of water/reflections during these scenes.
Okay…now to the things that I had some issues with. Leave now if you either already watched the show and don't want anything to pop that bliss bubble, or if you haven't watched the show and have never read the source material/seen Hidden Love. Go watch the drama and form your own opinion. If you start feeling a certain kind of way, by all means revisit this review. I don't want to yuck someone's yum, but a review/critique can sometimes feel like an attack if you aren't ready to hear a different POV.
My expectations were too high for this one, and I was left feeling somewhat disappointed in production(the team that adapts the material aka the bts people). I have a deep love for this story and these characters, and have an eye for production quality that will affect my overall viewing of a drama. I have a background in photography and my special interest is film & television. I'm harsher on this project because it was an extremely sought after IP with a pretty high budget behind it, as well as a great cast.
The story changes made throughout the drama were sometimes strange and other times outright nonsensical. To their credit, some of the changes were well executed and performed, leaving a lasting impression on the viewer.
But, to choose to add more depressing/traumatic things was a strange choice. The side stories they chose to include in a drama that already had a very heavy subject matter at its core tipped what was once a well-balanced melo-romance too far into the melo side of things.
If they wanted to expand the runtime they could have shown more of Sang Yan's inner world outside of Wen Yi Fan. Instead what we got were their friends dealing with a dementia grandpa and a dead dog. We didn't need parallels drawn for us with characters that didn't exist in the source material, that only slowed down the story. Sang Yan and Yi Fan's story was enough for the drama. We did not need a rich orphan with a dead dog and grandparents losing their mind and their love for each other to cut into character development happening with the lead couple/characters. Any other show I would have eaten it up and said thank you, but not in The First Frost.
I don't think this director really understands romantic romance, which is odd, considering he directed the Taiwanese version of It Started With a Kiss/They Kiss Again. He can do suspense and melodrama, but the tension and lightness that comes with love/attraction was lacking in the camera language used. He could do the sadness, but the happiness felt...surface level. (Other than that amazing scene where they used in camera practical projection of images on Wen Yi Fan in her bedroom.)
There were a lot of missed opportunities when it came to filming/editing detail shots. If you've ever watched a slow burn before it's all in the small hand movements, breath, slight dilation of the eyes/nose, getting an intentional medium to close shot of those moments ad weight to a scene that gives anticipation/tension. When those shots did exists some of them were cut short. Messing with the frame rate could have helped as well.
Some of the better moments were them in high school....which would make since with the whole It Started With a Kiss background. When Wen Yi Fan is pursuing Sang Yan very little of her fumbling attempts at flirting were shown. It's a good chunk of the novel and was glazed over in favor of dementia grandpa troubles.
Once they are together in the novel Yi Fan is a very physically affectionate person. She doesn't like it when he carries everything for her because it means he doesn't have a free hand for her to hold onto. THIS was a side of Yi Fan that was missing from this director's screenplay. We only see her like this when she's drunk after the wedding. She will get a look of frustration when she isn't able to express her affection well that Sang Yan finds adorable. We see a little of this in the drama, but they didn't lean into it as I feel they could have.
Major changes to source material that changes the characterizations of Sang Yan and Wen Yi Fan as people….
I mentioned this in the comment section when it happened the first time, but it needs to be said again. I don’t know why they chose to do this, and have only come to the conclusion that they wanted to give fan service to Hidden Love fans, which is weird because it's different actors so no one would honestly care if they do or do not show up on screen. But to include Duan Jia Xu into present day Sang Yan's life prior to the summer Sang Yan visits his sister is…wild for multiple reasons the glaringly obvious one is having him be half naked in Wen Yi Fan's apartment without permission.
Sang Yan was the one to make the house rules so that Wen Yi Fan could feel safe and comfortable. There is no way on god's green earth that Sang Yan, protector of Wen Yi Fan would let a MAN into their shared apartment WITHOUT HER KNOWLEDGE. All production had to do to rectify this is to show that Sang Yan texted her that his friend was coming over, she could have been busy at work and forgot that she had agreed and THEN run into Duan Jai Xu outside the bathroom. Wen Yi Fan did not need to be surprised multiple times by a strange half-dressed wet man in her private space. She also never would have allowed the intern into her apartment. And the flasher when she met the intern never existed…why are we adding more unwanted interactions with strange men? It became gratuitous.
Another issue with the changes were that of Che Xing De. Instead of him being a drunk brother of her aunt that moved in with them because he couldn't hold down a job, in the drama the apartment became HIS. Instead of being the drunk driver that she reports on late one night, he's just a passenger in the car and then later becomes the security guard for her TV station's building....I'm sorry...what was the reason? It was like the director needed him to be more than just a deadbeat man. The whole point was that even a deadbeat drunk had more power than a helpless teenage girl whose mother abandoned her. They gave the villain more power at the expense of taking agency from the female lead. Instead of being a drunk, loitering outside her office building extort money and then robbing her, he became employed by her company with access to the building she works in late at night....do yall see why this logic does not work?....He had access to the building that she works in, alone, and never acted on it.....she had knowledge of is past behavior and is a reporter and said NOTHING to her co-workers or bosses about the predator "protecting" the building. Wen Yi Fan would NEVER. She might have been a private person, but if he wasn't just a bum harassing her 100% would have told someone else.
And for the largest change to the source material, we come to episode 24-27. In the novel Sang Yan and Yi Fan get into an argument, a small one, right before he leaves for the airport to visit Zhi Zhi in Yihe, leaving his luggage in the car and leaving the car behind for Yi Fan to use. Two days later...a whole 48 hours...Yi Fan has taken 3 days of leave from work and shows up at the airport in Yihe. Sang Yan runs into her at the airport after getting worried when she doesn't answer his call and having decided to fly back early to check on her. SHE GOES TO HIM IN LESS THAN 48 HOURS. She doesn't respond to his texts for a few hours and he gets worried enough to head home from across the country. They NEVER stop communicating once they are together.
So tell me, dear reader, why oh, why did the director decide to change this to Wen Yi Fan ghosting not only Sang Yan, but her friends, colleagues, and CAT, to go off to Hong Kong for 6 MONTHs? And the ONLY reason it wasn't MORE than 6 months was because she gets spotted by her childhood friend and then gets hunted down by her best friend's rich boyfriend....again...WTF?
They made Wen Yi Fan way more passive than she is in the source material to uplift other male characters…it was a strange choice for a show centered on a woman's struggles and journey to self-love and being able to accept other's love.
I just feel like the director was trying to do a lot of things filming technique wise, but didn't really execute them well. Certain filming techniques were like watching a first year film student test out their camera equipment for the first time and over doing it. I know that sounds very harsh, but to film so many scenes in the exact same manner i.e. through a pane of glass, a mirror, having a lens flare or object out of focus in the foreground while focusing on the background repeatedly when trying to portray different moods was imo a bad use of film language. (please look at Film 'Making Basics: Everything you need to know in 8 minutes' by Alfie Vaughan) It will give you the basics of what I've been looking at when watching shows and may help you understand why I am the way I am. It's not very in depth but yeah.
Anyway, to finish off this very long review. I did have an overall positive viewing experience, but it just didn't meet my expectations for an adaptation of a slow burn romance with it's budget behind it.
I liked the balance that was kept throughout the show of both mains' perspectives being shown. There were certain aspects to Sang Yan's character that were sprinkled in early on that would pay off much later in the drama, just like it did in the novel. There were even a few things that they held off on revealing until a bit later in the drama than in the original source material which I feel worked better.
Shang Ruo Nan really understood Wen Yi Fan's shyness, curiosity, hesitance…and her innocence down. A thing that a lot of people seem to forget is that Yi Fan had to grow up very fast, very suddenly. But with that speed run to adulthood she skipped over a lot of other milestones someone in their late teens and early twenties would experience. She only ever got to experience unconditional love from two people, and both left her early. The one left remaining who was supposed to love her unconditionally then made her feel unlovable/unworthy of unconditional love and care. So the slower pace of the drama lent to the slow progression of Yi Fan coming out of her shell.
Only critique I have is that they didn't hire someone who knows ballet to get Shang Ruo Nan's posture down. So imo it doesn't so much fall on the actress, but production. They could have easily used a foot double for close ups and done medium shots with Shang Ruo Nan...which there were many, but she never held her chest or arms correctly for someone trained in en pointe ballet. A real missed opportunity, imo, for showing Wen Yi Fan's inner world would have been showing her breaking in her pointe shoes, showing her mending the last few pairs she was able to get before her mother cut her off. An example of this filming technique can be found in the movie 'Center Stage' if you are a dancer, chances are you know exactly which scene I'm referring to. I don't think you realized how many and and how expensive pointe ballet shoes are. They come in many sizes and variations and it is extremely important to have pairs that fit you. A professional dancer can go through a pair within less than a week. Also one does not simple jump back into en pointe after 6 years of zero dancing...good way to never walk again. her shoes should have looked more worn and shown her personal touch. They felt sterile and like they just came out of a box.
The director is good at filming the darker in mood scenes. So most of the sleepwalking and trauma related flashbacks. The use of light within the apartment was well done. Using softer practical lights to show warmth and a sense of comfort. He also excels at young love/innocent crush type of casual scenes. Their high school flashback scenes were some of the best shot of the entire series. The color grading was ever so slightly different and I preferred his use of water/reflections during these scenes.
Okay…now to the things that I had some issues with. Leave now if you either already watched the show and don't want anything to pop that bliss bubble, or if you haven't watched the show and have never read the source material/seen Hidden Love. Go watch the drama and form your own opinion. If you start feeling a certain kind of way, by all means revisit this review. I don't want to yuck someone's yum, but a review/critique can sometimes feel like an attack if you aren't ready to hear a different POV.
My expectations were too high for this one, and I was left feeling somewhat disappointed in production(the team that adapts the material aka the bts people). I have a deep love for this story and these characters, and have an eye for production quality that will affect my overall viewing of a drama. I have a background in photography and my special interest is film & television. I'm harsher on this project because it was an extremely sought after IP with a pretty high budget behind it, as well as a great cast.
The story changes made throughout the drama were sometimes strange and other times outright nonsensical. To their credit, some of the changes were well executed and performed, leaving a lasting impression on the viewer.
But, to choose to add more depressing/traumatic things was a strange choice. The side stories they chose to include in a drama that already had a very heavy subject matter at its core tipped what was once a well-balanced melo-romance too far into the melo side of things.
If they wanted to expand the runtime they could have shown more of Sang Yan's inner world outside of Wen Yi Fan. Instead what we got were their friends dealing with a dementia grandpa and a dead dog. We didn't need parallels drawn for us with characters that didn't exist in the source material, that only slowed down the story. Sang Yan and Yi Fan's story was enough for the drama. We did not need a rich orphan with a dead dog and grandparents losing their mind and their love for each other to cut into character development happening with the lead couple/characters. Any other show I would have eaten it up and said thank you, but not in The First Frost.
I don't think this director really understands romantic romance, which is odd, considering he directed the Taiwanese version of It Started With a Kiss/They Kiss Again. He can do suspense and melodrama, but the tension and lightness that comes with love/attraction was lacking in the camera language used. He could do the sadness, but the happiness felt...surface level. (Other than that amazing scene where they used in camera practical projection of images on Wen Yi Fan in her bedroom.)
There were a lot of missed opportunities when it came to filming/editing detail shots. If you've ever watched a slow burn before it's all in the small hand movements, breath, slight dilation of the eyes/nose, getting an intentional medium to close shot of those moments ad weight to a scene that gives anticipation/tension. When those shots did exists some of them were cut short. Messing with the frame rate could have helped as well.
Some of the better moments were them in high school....which would make since with the whole It Started With a Kiss background. When Wen Yi Fan is pursuing Sang Yan very little of her fumbling attempts at flirting were shown. It's a good chunk of the novel and was glazed over in favor of dementia grandpa troubles.
Once they are together in the novel Yi Fan is a very physically affectionate person. She doesn't like it when he carries everything for her because it means he doesn't have a free hand for her to hold onto. THIS was a side of Yi Fan that was missing from this director's screenplay. We only see her like this when she's drunk after the wedding. She will get a look of frustration when she isn't able to express her affection well that Sang Yan finds adorable. We see a little of this in the drama, but they didn't lean into it as I feel they could have.
Major changes to source material that changes the characterizations of Sang Yan and Wen Yi Fan as people….
I mentioned this in the comment section when it happened the first time, but it needs to be said again. I don’t know why they chose to do this, and have only come to the conclusion that they wanted to give fan service to Hidden Love fans, which is weird because it's different actors so no one would honestly care if they do or do not show up on screen. But to include Duan Jia Xu into present day Sang Yan's life prior to the summer Sang Yan visits his sister is…wild for multiple reasons the glaringly obvious one is having him be half naked in Wen Yi Fan's apartment without permission.
Sang Yan was the one to make the house rules so that Wen Yi Fan could feel safe and comfortable. There is no way on god's green earth that Sang Yan, protector of Wen Yi Fan would let a MAN into their shared apartment WITHOUT HER KNOWLEDGE. All production had to do to rectify this is to show that Sang Yan texted her that his friend was coming over, she could have been busy at work and forgot that she had agreed and THEN run into Duan Jai Xu outside the bathroom. Wen Yi Fan did not need to be surprised multiple times by a strange half-dressed wet man in her private space. She also never would have allowed the intern into her apartment. And the flasher when she met the intern never existed…why are we adding more unwanted interactions with strange men? It became gratuitous.
Another issue with the changes were that of Che Xing De. Instead of him being a drunk brother of her aunt that moved in with them because he couldn't hold down a job, in the drama the apartment became HIS. Instead of being the drunk driver that she reports on late one night, he's just a passenger in the car and then later becomes the security guard for her TV station's building....I'm sorry...what was the reason? It was like the director needed him to be more than just a deadbeat man. The whole point was that even a deadbeat drunk had more power than a helpless teenage girl whose mother abandoned her. They gave the villain more power at the expense of taking agency from the female lead. Instead of being a drunk, loitering outside her office building extort money and then robbing her, he became employed by her company with access to the building she works in late at night....do yall see why this logic does not work?....He had access to the building that she works in, alone, and never acted on it.....she had knowledge of is past behavior and is a reporter and said NOTHING to her co-workers or bosses about the predator "protecting" the building. Wen Yi Fan would NEVER. She might have been a private person, but if he wasn't just a bum harassing her 100% would have told someone else.
And for the largest change to the source material, we come to episode 24-27. In the novel Sang Yan and Yi Fan get into an argument, a small one, right before he leaves for the airport to visit Zhi Zhi in Yihe, leaving his luggage in the car and leaving the car behind for Yi Fan to use. Two days later...a whole 48 hours...Yi Fan has taken 3 days of leave from work and shows up at the airport in Yihe. Sang Yan runs into her at the airport after getting worried when she doesn't answer his call and having decided to fly back early to check on her. SHE GOES TO HIM IN LESS THAN 48 HOURS. She doesn't respond to his texts for a few hours and he gets worried enough to head home from across the country. They NEVER stop communicating once they are together.
So tell me, dear reader, why oh, why did the director decide to change this to Wen Yi Fan ghosting not only Sang Yan, but her friends, colleagues, and CAT, to go off to Hong Kong for 6 MONTHs? And the ONLY reason it wasn't MORE than 6 months was because she gets spotted by her childhood friend and then gets hunted down by her best friend's rich boyfriend....again...WTF?
They made Wen Yi Fan way more passive than she is in the source material to uplift other male characters…it was a strange choice for a show centered on a woman's struggles and journey to self-love and being able to accept other's love.
I just feel like the director was trying to do a lot of things filming technique wise, but didn't really execute them well. Certain filming techniques were like watching a first year film student test out their camera equipment for the first time and over doing it. I know that sounds very harsh, but to film so many scenes in the exact same manner i.e. through a pane of glass, a mirror, having a lens flare or object out of focus in the foreground while focusing on the background repeatedly when trying to portray different moods was imo a bad use of film language. (please look at Film 'Making Basics: Everything you need to know in 8 minutes' by Alfie Vaughan) It will give you the basics of what I've been looking at when watching shows and may help you understand why I am the way I am. It's not very in depth but yeah.
Anyway, to finish off this very long review. I did have an overall positive viewing experience, but it just didn't meet my expectations for an adaptation of a slow burn romance with it's budget behind it.
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