Behind Cut (2021)

Complete Waste of Time

I hate to give such a terrible review to any Korean BL, but this one was terrible.

100 minutes is plenty of time to tell a story - there are very few films that are longer than that. But it's a problem when you try to tell a 1,000 minute story in 100 minutes and so you film 100 of those 1,000 minutes, but apparently randomly selected.

It's perfectly OK to hint at backstory without fleshing it out, like the relationship between Yi Bin and Ki Jin - that was fine. It only takes a few seconds to set the stage & show us Yeong Woo's life - that was fine too. But what is the story that was being told? I have no idea, because it was entirely skipped and no context provided. Did Ki Jin break up with Yeong Wu? Ghost him? Give his job to Yi Bin? Flee the country for several years? Or did only a week or two pass? Yi Bin more or less says that everything we thought was happening didn't happen, so where was Ki Jin for the last few episodes, and why was he suddenly behaving like an old woman instead of a puckish young designer?

If Ki Jin broke up with Yeong Woo, that might have been a nice scene to see. If there was a big fashion show (which appeared to be the climax to which this was building), I can understand it not being shown due to cost, but we could at least have seen the aftermath. Likewise, in Nobleman Ryu's Wedding, we didn't need to see the actual wedding - people complained about that, but do you really expect them to produce a Joseon-era noble wedding? That would blow the annual budget of a small nation.

The production quality of this was very average, and perhaps below. There are lots of sound mistakes, and the acting is mediocre - the two mains are good enough to enjoy, but uninspiring. The best that can be said is that the kisses looked pretty good, not the usual rubber lip-touch.

My best guess is that they filmed a lot more but the acting or production quality was too poor to put in the final cut and they didn't have money or time for reshoots. Either that or the director's dog ate the script and they had to dig whatever scraps of it that they could out of its poop.

I would stay away from this one.

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whoever decided on the pacing should be left behind and cut... jk not jk

production: i don't think the production looks low budget at all. even if it is, i didn't mind it and thought it was fitting for the storyline they had in mind.

story: this is where they messed up. the plot can be engaging but the screenplay is the worst. the pacing is terrible, i don't know what's happening, and the end was clearly rushed. they could build the relationship more and tell the backstories much more but i ended but not satisfied... they need to invest on better screenplays because this is not it.

acting: the other two actors were good for bl standards, the actors that played yeong woo and yi bin. the other one that played ki jin is clearly a rookie and it showed especially on the "emotional" scene. but the acting didn't bother me it's the pacing that ruined this show for me. kudos on the kissing scene tho! they did a great job and it's not a dead fish kiss. like that's how you do a kissing scene!

ost: the ost is so good. i keep repeating the "wish upon the stars", it's a top 3 bl ost of all time for me

rewatch value: i won't be rewatching the whole show maybe some scenes like their date scene and the kissing scenes.. because that's the only good parts like why would i rewatch a show that has a terrible pacing.

overall: so much potential but they dropped the ball so hard... like the first few episodes are good but then they cannot make stories that feel fleshed out and not rushed. i feel like at this point, kbl need to focus on the story, because that's the reason some of us are watching. the kissing scene saved this bl for me, otherwise, it would've gotten an even lower score.

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