1
1
This review may contain spoilers
A classic by the Hong Sisters
This is a solid classic. I loved it and stayed up way too late to binge it last Friday night.
Listen to no one, not even me. Proceed with caution, and try this out for yourself. The summaries given out publically before the show aired may have been somewhat misleading.
The frame is that of a crew and actors shooting a romantic dating-reality show. The two stars of this show-within-the-show, the Korean actress, suddenly made famous by a role as an axe-wielding zombie, and the princely Japanese romance lead, have to summon romantic feelings as part of their jobs. The basic genre which develops inside of that frame is that of a psychological thriller, because it turns out that the actress has crazy difficulty with romance. The issue of sincerity -- how do you know if someone means what they say? -- is thus handled very cleverly at both levels.
The misunderstandings of the OTP turn out not to be linguistic, since both the interpreter and the lead actress speak Korean. The ML, played by the legendary Kim Seon Ho, struggles wryly, as will you, to understand the FL. The SML, Hiro, the Japanese co-star of the dating show, also struggles; he doesnt know Korean, she understands neither Japanese nor English, so he ends up learning Korean.
Go Yoon Jung really shines. The actress she plays, MuHui, constantly hallucinates an intensely funny, mischievous and irresponsible alter. She suffers from a classic case of dissociative personality disorder due to a very traumatic childhood. Do-Ra-Mi, the alter, takes over MuHui's personality in her off-hours and meddles with MuHui's love life..
Zombie love. Most of MuHui's energy and joy is captured in her alternate self. She slept in a coma through the growth of her fame. The ML, a classic taciturn lead, is still enraptured by a love he could never achieve. He has a richly difficult family life, swiftly introduced but not given as much visual time as his amazing house full of books tottering on every surface. The house itself is allusive, literary. It is inhabited by a wild-haired author, a family friend; also by the love rival from the frozen past, a bohemian brother. Many more secondary characters are clearly drawn and reflect issues brought up by the OTP. without their own entire arc made visible.
The script and dialogue of Can This Love Be Translated are classic Hong Sisters: heavy on metaphor, difficult to translate into English, thick and rich with all sorts of plot textures. THE HS ARE NEVER EVER PREDICTABLE. HS shows often involve some incredibly creative twists on currently popular genres which put them at the top of the class. Some love the HS, some hate them. Find out who you are.
My favorite visual trick amongst many lovely scenes, shots and sequences, is that the show starts out in the open light of day, in Italy, Japan and most notably in the wide open spaces of the Canadian West. At the end of the Canada episodes the crew chases the spectacle of the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, only to fall asleep exhausted and miss the show. The lovers, up late by chance, do see it. The show, then moving to Italy, dives into darkness psychologically and frequently visually, as the two begin to heal her illness. The show finishes in Korea at a dark sky reserve where the lovers stargaze under the brilliant night sky. Nice, huh?
But before we get there there is a lot of translation to be done by the viewer. Does Hiro fall for MuHui, will MuHui and the interpreter ever wake up and fall in love, why ever does MuHui appear at one point to try to seduce poor Hiro? Why are certain conversations between the ML and FL completely opaque; how do they suddenly turn into fights? (tbh, this is a RL experience for many of us, right?) At some points at the ends of one or two scenes the actors' dialogues are left unsubtitled -- horrifyingly, this may have been deliberate?
The romance is a bit old-school, for my taste. The structures of the 12ep plot may seem old-school too, since the HS wrote that book on 16 episode romcom that you are reading from. The halfway mark is hit at ep6 -- the lovers commit. Troubles and travails begin in episode 7 right on cue. Instant resolutions and sudden wrap-ups are held in the final episodes 11-12, as a vestigial representation of the old scramble of non pre-produced shows. I was actually happy that this took up two episodes instead of the often crazy old-style one episode wrap.
The Hong Sisters have written 14 shows, each distinct, in many genres, It is a mystery how they manage to hit the public sweet spot every time. If you want your favourite romantic recipe, this isnt for you. But this is the real warning: they mostly write smash hits, so you may miss out.
ps. I normally strive for short, somewhat condensed reviews. Apologies for this one. It confuses me that my own view of the show was so different than most others', so I tried to lay out why. Probably not very well, but whatever.
pps. here is another way to look at it. People always contrast the Hong sisters' top shows to those of Kim EunSook, the writer for Goblin and most recently, for Genie Make a Wish. For me the imperfections of even the best of the HS still have more heart and sincerity than the slicker and often more entertaining KES. Both brilliant. Both classic.
Listen to no one, not even me. Proceed with caution, and try this out for yourself. The summaries given out publically before the show aired may have been somewhat misleading.
The frame is that of a crew and actors shooting a romantic dating-reality show. The two stars of this show-within-the-show, the Korean actress, suddenly made famous by a role as an axe-wielding zombie, and the princely Japanese romance lead, have to summon romantic feelings as part of their jobs. The basic genre which develops inside of that frame is that of a psychological thriller, because it turns out that the actress has crazy difficulty with romance. The issue of sincerity -- how do you know if someone means what they say? -- is thus handled very cleverly at both levels.
The misunderstandings of the OTP turn out not to be linguistic, since both the interpreter and the lead actress speak Korean. The ML, played by the legendary Kim Seon Ho, struggles wryly, as will you, to understand the FL. The SML, Hiro, the Japanese co-star of the dating show, also struggles; he doesnt know Korean, she understands neither Japanese nor English, so he ends up learning Korean.
Go Yoon Jung really shines. The actress she plays, MuHui, constantly hallucinates an intensely funny, mischievous and irresponsible alter. She suffers from a classic case of dissociative personality disorder due to a very traumatic childhood. Do-Ra-Mi, the alter, takes over MuHui's personality in her off-hours and meddles with MuHui's love life..
Zombie love. Most of MuHui's energy and joy is captured in her alternate self. She slept in a coma through the growth of her fame. The ML, a classic taciturn lead, is still enraptured by a love he could never achieve. He has a richly difficult family life, swiftly introduced but not given as much visual time as his amazing house full of books tottering on every surface. The house itself is allusive, literary. It is inhabited by a wild-haired author, a family friend; also by the love rival from the frozen past, a bohemian brother. Many more secondary characters are clearly drawn and reflect issues brought up by the OTP. without their own entire arc made visible.
The script and dialogue of Can This Love Be Translated are classic Hong Sisters: heavy on metaphor, difficult to translate into English, thick and rich with all sorts of plot textures. THE HS ARE NEVER EVER PREDICTABLE. HS shows often involve some incredibly creative twists on currently popular genres which put them at the top of the class. Some love the HS, some hate them. Find out who you are.
My favorite visual trick amongst many lovely scenes, shots and sequences, is that the show starts out in the open light of day, in Italy, Japan and most notably in the wide open spaces of the Canadian West. At the end of the Canada episodes the crew chases the spectacle of the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, only to fall asleep exhausted and miss the show. The lovers, up late by chance, do see it. The show, then moving to Italy, dives into darkness psychologically and frequently visually, as the two begin to heal her illness. The show finishes in Korea at a dark sky reserve where the lovers stargaze under the brilliant night sky. Nice, huh?
But before we get there there is a lot of translation to be done by the viewer. Does Hiro fall for MuHui, will MuHui and the interpreter ever wake up and fall in love, why ever does MuHui appear at one point to try to seduce poor Hiro? Why are certain conversations between the ML and FL completely opaque; how do they suddenly turn into fights? (tbh, this is a RL experience for many of us, right?) At some points at the ends of one or two scenes the actors' dialogues are left unsubtitled -- horrifyingly, this may have been deliberate?
The romance is a bit old-school, for my taste. The structures of the 12ep plot may seem old-school too, since the HS wrote that book on 16 episode romcom that you are reading from. The halfway mark is hit at ep6 -- the lovers commit. Troubles and travails begin in episode 7 right on cue. Instant resolutions and sudden wrap-ups are held in the final episodes 11-12, as a vestigial representation of the old scramble of non pre-produced shows. I was actually happy that this took up two episodes instead of the often crazy old-style one episode wrap.
The Hong Sisters have written 14 shows, each distinct, in many genres, It is a mystery how they manage to hit the public sweet spot every time. If you want your favourite romantic recipe, this isnt for you. But this is the real warning: they mostly write smash hits, so you may miss out.
ps. I normally strive for short, somewhat condensed reviews. Apologies for this one. It confuses me that my own view of the show was so different than most others', so I tried to lay out why. Probably not very well, but whatever.
pps. here is another way to look at it. People always contrast the Hong sisters' top shows to those of Kim EunSook, the writer for Goblin and most recently, for Genie Make a Wish. For me the imperfections of even the best of the HS still have more heart and sincerity than the slicker and often more entertaining KES. Both brilliant. Both classic.
Was this review helpful to you?
