eggcellant

An enjoyable, smoldering, hot drama revolving around revenge, double identity, and deception. The drama did a smart job of keeping focus on the revenge storyline and not let the mutual attraction that arises between Xue Fangfei and Duke Su become the focus. By doing this, it made the romance, the tension actually better between these two main characters. And simply put, Wu Jinyan (as Xue Fangfei) and Wang Xingyue (as Duke Su) were just hot together, visually and acting wise. You could feel their acting chemistry bleed thru the screen. These two leads did a solid job with their characters. In fact, I would say all the side characters were portrayed with solid acting, including that by Li Meng (as Princess Wanning) and Liang Yongqi (as Shen Yurong). And this drama very much made me notice the relative newcomer Wang Xingyue.

Cinematically, the production team definitely put a lot of emphasis on beautiful composition. Although there were moments, and they were by far few, when the close-up and slow motion effects could have been toned down. But given the attractive leads, Wu Jinyan and Wang XingYue, I just started enjoying the close-up shots of these attractive leads. The one scene I felt did not fit with the tone of the drama was when Xue Fangfei was portrayed flying to heaven as a symbolism of her prowess on the zither. The symbolism is understood, but the visual SFX made it seem like a fantasy moment, and this drama is not in realm of fantasy at all. Fortunately, the rest of the storyline did not get detracted by this fantasy moment.

Overall, would definitely recommend The Double.