I LOVED this drama
Couple of Mirrors is a beautifully rendered period piece, though what period exactly is a bit ambiguous to me - I'm guessing the mid Republican era, probably before WWII. I know less than diddly about 20th century China, so this is a SWAG based on political/social references to Japan and some Chinese Civil War-ish looking battle scenes in the backstory of one of the leads. Drama Wiki says early Republican era, but the clothes and automobiles seem at least mid to late 1930s to me.
The cinematography, editing, wardrobe, and set design/dressing alone are worth the watch. Fortunately, the series has much more going for it. The main characters are sharply drawn, perfectly cast - especially the leads (more on that later), and flawlessly acted. The relationships develop or crumble organically and naturally, with nothing seeming forced or rushed. The script weaves together themes of love lost and found: infidelity, betrayal, grief, passion, violence, deception, murder, courage & cowardice, female friendship / burgeoning romance, growing trust, and emotional resilience. The supporting characters, and even the side characters, are intricately woven in a story that is charming and delightfully witty, complex in scope, yet always feels intimate in nature. There is pervasive moral ambiguity that adds intrigue and tension, and it's surprising how quickly the absolutism of conventional morality morphs to a circumstantial relativism of good bad-guys, bad good-guys, bad bad-guys, and good good-guys whose inflexibility steers inexorably to an outcome that is righteous, but not just.
The two main characters -
Zhang Nan and Sun Yi Han both have a charm and wit that is magnified when they perform together. I can't imagine better casting in terms of their delivery timing, physical humor, and obvious chemistry. After Couple of Mirrors, they were cast together in Hi Producer (2023), IMO a propagandistic paean that would have been nearly unwatchable except for the synergy of their on-screen time together.
• Xu You Yi (Zhang Nan) is the perfectly coifed and dutifully well behaved wife of a powerful, wealthy family's apparent golden boy. It's an image she carries off so precisely and demurely, despite her own successful career, that the strength underlying the façade is surprising to the point of being shocking to those who had believed what they saw was all there was.
• Yan Wei (Sun Yi Han) is pragmatic and decisive, with a personal morality that presents as transactional, but is, in reality, the opposite of impersonal and emotionless. Her internal true north, honed by poverty, deprivation, and the mercenary demands of war, is a "damn to torpedoes" delivery of retribution, tempered with compassion and protectiveness for those she perceives as innocently harmed by the injustice of others. It is her protectiveness that first compels her into Xu You Yi's orbit, but it is the gravity of You Yi's hidden strength and uncomplicated openness that secures Yan Wei to her side.
Supporting characters -
The supporting characters sit on the divides of the class and wealth that binds their natures and defines their ambitions. There are no weak links here, either in the way the characters are drawn or the manner in which they are portrayed by an outstanding cast of actors. Even the most minor characters exhibit a sense of place and mission.
Standouts:
• He Feng Tian as Detective Jiang Bin. Not the brightest bulb in the box, and sometimes so inflexible he gets in his own way, Jiang Bin is a 20th century Eastern hemisphere Dudly Do-Right: he is moralistic and relentless. No matter how many times he gets it wrong, he will not be deterred until he finally gets it right, or - in the case of Yan Wei - somewhere adjacent to right.
• Liu Zhi Yang's Zhou Heng is so well played he almost elicits a wisp of sympathy for this selfish, self-centered, spoiled man-child emotionally crippled by a lifetime of not quite measuring up according to Daddy.
• Zhou Heng's mirror image is Zhang Wan, played by Anna Fang who exuberantly portrays a woman so classically narcissistic that no action is too heinous in her singular pursuit of wealth, status, and social acceptance.
• Zhou Da Wei, cast as Xie Yi Fan, a man who thought he was riding to the fair damsel’s much belated rescue in his own personal redemption arc, but ended up gob smacked and worse for wear, having been made redundant.
Despite Chinese censorship regulations that restrict overt depictions of romantic intimacy between women, the nature of the relationship between You Yi and her "Wei Wei " is clearly more than gal-pals - even if you haven't read the manhwa - unless you want it to be gal-pals, then the coding is subtle enough that you can lean into that if it comforts you in some manner.
There are some loose strings and steering-veering in the second half of the final episode that are clearly, so far, an unsuccessful bid for a second season. I wish it had worked. Since it didn't (yet), I have decided that the story ended happily at the midway mark of the final episode. Even so, Couple of Mirrors is easily a 10/10 series for me. If it had any substantive flaws, I happily missed them.
The cinematography, editing, wardrobe, and set design/dressing alone are worth the watch. Fortunately, the series has much more going for it. The main characters are sharply drawn, perfectly cast - especially the leads (more on that later), and flawlessly acted. The relationships develop or crumble organically and naturally, with nothing seeming forced or rushed. The script weaves together themes of love lost and found: infidelity, betrayal, grief, passion, violence, deception, murder, courage & cowardice, female friendship / burgeoning romance, growing trust, and emotional resilience. The supporting characters, and even the side characters, are intricately woven in a story that is charming and delightfully witty, complex in scope, yet always feels intimate in nature. There is pervasive moral ambiguity that adds intrigue and tension, and it's surprising how quickly the absolutism of conventional morality morphs to a circumstantial relativism of good bad-guys, bad good-guys, bad bad-guys, and good good-guys whose inflexibility steers inexorably to an outcome that is righteous, but not just.
The two main characters -
Zhang Nan and Sun Yi Han both have a charm and wit that is magnified when they perform together. I can't imagine better casting in terms of their delivery timing, physical humor, and obvious chemistry. After Couple of Mirrors, they were cast together in Hi Producer (2023), IMO a propagandistic paean that would have been nearly unwatchable except for the synergy of their on-screen time together.
• Xu You Yi (Zhang Nan) is the perfectly coifed and dutifully well behaved wife of a powerful, wealthy family's apparent golden boy. It's an image she carries off so precisely and demurely, despite her own successful career, that the strength underlying the façade is surprising to the point of being shocking to those who had believed what they saw was all there was.
• Yan Wei (Sun Yi Han) is pragmatic and decisive, with a personal morality that presents as transactional, but is, in reality, the opposite of impersonal and emotionless. Her internal true north, honed by poverty, deprivation, and the mercenary demands of war, is a "damn to torpedoes" delivery of retribution, tempered with compassion and protectiveness for those she perceives as innocently harmed by the injustice of others. It is her protectiveness that first compels her into Xu You Yi's orbit, but it is the gravity of You Yi's hidden strength and uncomplicated openness that secures Yan Wei to her side.
Supporting characters -
The supporting characters sit on the divides of the class and wealth that binds their natures and defines their ambitions. There are no weak links here, either in the way the characters are drawn or the manner in which they are portrayed by an outstanding cast of actors. Even the most minor characters exhibit a sense of place and mission.
Standouts:
• He Feng Tian as Detective Jiang Bin. Not the brightest bulb in the box, and sometimes so inflexible he gets in his own way, Jiang Bin is a 20th century Eastern hemisphere Dudly Do-Right: he is moralistic and relentless. No matter how many times he gets it wrong, he will not be deterred until he finally gets it right, or - in the case of Yan Wei - somewhere adjacent to right.
• Liu Zhi Yang's Zhou Heng is so well played he almost elicits a wisp of sympathy for this selfish, self-centered, spoiled man-child emotionally crippled by a lifetime of not quite measuring up according to Daddy.
• Zhou Heng's mirror image is Zhang Wan, played by Anna Fang who exuberantly portrays a woman so classically narcissistic that no action is too heinous in her singular pursuit of wealth, status, and social acceptance.
• Zhou Da Wei, cast as Xie Yi Fan, a man who thought he was riding to the fair damsel’s much belated rescue in his own personal redemption arc, but ended up gob smacked and worse for wear, having been made redundant.
Despite Chinese censorship regulations that restrict overt depictions of romantic intimacy between women, the nature of the relationship between You Yi and her "Wei Wei " is clearly more than gal-pals - even if you haven't read the manhwa - unless you want it to be gal-pals, then the coding is subtle enough that you can lean into that if it comforts you in some manner.
There are some loose strings and steering-veering in the second half of the final episode that are clearly, so far, an unsuccessful bid for a second season. I wish it had worked. Since it didn't (yet), I have decided that the story ended happily at the midway mark of the final episode. Even so, Couple of Mirrors is easily a 10/10 series for me. If it had any substantive flaws, I happily missed them.
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