M31
US
This review may contain spoilers
To sum up : "This drama is simply a work of art".Never thought I would ever give a perfect 10 to any kdrama, but to my utter delight, this one met my exacting standards. I almost didn’t watch this, because the synopsis was so unappealing. "Older married woman has affair with a kid young enough to be her son" … uhh..thanks, I'll pass … not interested in watching successful people who ought to be content with their lives creating artificial angst for themselves and the viewers. Just goes to show how wrong pre-conceived notions can be.
I was bored one day and since it was on Netflix, I just started watching it.
The first episode was a little random and almost lost me … but …just hang in there, because starting from the 2nd episode, the story just took off, and wow, what a ride it was from that point onwards! The acting, the music, the direction, the photography, the sets/lighting. ….every single scene seemed to be so lovingly put together and the result was a work of art.
The main female protagonist was NOT a korean version of Madame Bovary I thought she would be -- instead, here was one of the best female characters I've seen on screen, korean or otherwise. She was neither a "good woman" or a "bad woman" -- instead she was beautifully multi-layered with enough strengths and failings to fill a book. She was steely strong and scarily manipulative when it came to her business dealings, her face never betraying her inner emotions and remaining calm under intense pressure she faced every day. She was always a step ahead of the game and it amazed me how she openly played the "triple agent" in the nasty chaebol family she was working for (you have to watch it to understand the context). She was blatantly ambitious and didn’t hesitate to hurt people along the way if it meant getting ahead.
On the other hand, deep inside the "unspoilt" part of her, she loved the piano. And she loved it with passion. This is what brings the young self-taught genius pianist and her together in the first place. Their slowly growing love (slow on her end, but almost immediate on his) is so intense that it gave me goose bumps and butterflies several times. Their passion for each other is so uniquely and interestingly depicted that I have to bow down to the director and writer. It is not your typical "slow-mo dramatic kiss and hug" scene. Instead, we often see only the back of their heads when they are kissing. But the set-up, the background music, the slightest flicker on the actors' faces, their body movements are what builds up the crackling sexual tension.
SPOILER ahead******* : the pivotal scene when they first make love was so beautifully filmed it just took my breath way. Instead of showing us the details, the director has us listen to the lovers' voice over as they softly confide their fears to each other and comfort each other, while the camera pans over several innocuous inanimate objects in the shabby apartment, carefully avoiding any glimpse of the bed. The net effect : the most tuggingly-intimate love scene I've ever seen.
******SPOILER END
Both the actors have done a stellar job in portraying their characters with great nuance and complexity. And they fit together so well and naturally that the age difference just melts. Theirs is the best chemistry I've seen …period …they just burn the screen up together. I wonder how watching the actual filming on the set would have been. Their scenes together were so real and so palpable.
In the end, the "affair" actually takes a backseat . The story is really about her self-discovery and how she gets the courage to own up to her mistakes and start life all over again with a clean slate. I LOVED the ending -- it was perfect and I wouldnt have it any other way.
The actor who played the poor husband (who is not a very sympathetic character anyway) actually did rather a remarkable job in pulling it off. He was not so unsympathetic that you hate him. In fact, I felt a little sorry for him, not because his wife leaves him (they were never "together" emotionally to start with), but because he was really not capable in his career despite ambitions. He just ended playing puppet to his superiors but was always on the losing end. So he was just plain weak …. but the actor succeeded in not making him totally despicable.
Lastly, this drama would NOT have been the same without the astounding music. I would even go so far as to say that the music is truly the main character in the entire show. Thanks to this show, I was introduced to some amazing piano pieces that I have downloaded and listen to frequently.
This drama has truly spoilt me for all future kdramas, and I really hope and wish this team of director/writer would come together again and do another show.
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This is, hands down, the best kdrama I have ever seen. The shining star was the writing/plot - it was so amazingly tight, crisp and detailed and not a wasted moment or glance, that I have to say the writer is a complete genius. His characters were complex and multidimensional, and even though many of them were morally bankrupt, each one had a well fleshed out backstory to how they became the corrupt individuals who would stoop to almost anything to achieve their ends. The relentless back-and-forth between the characters and plot twists had me almost gasping for breath after each episode. By the end of the series, I fully understood why it was called Punch -- it really was like a very long, exhausting but exhilarating boxing match. (And I'm no boxing fan by any means lol).
I loved the use of poetic metaphors that the villain character delivers. You can tell the actor really relished his lines by the way he rolls them off his tongue with a deliciously evil glint in his eyes. All the actors were superb – not a weak link in sight. They did full justice to the wonderful writing by just allowing the words to speak for themselves, and not overacting or over dramatizing. Given the nature of the story this could have been very tempting for some lesser actors. All credit goes to the director as well for keeping this as tight and minimalistic as possible.
I loved the hero (or should I say antihero) – such a brilliant mind who could come up with the most twisted trick and pull it off against all odds. At first I kept thinking that there would be some magical cure for him -- this is a kdrama, after all, right? And then, when this looked more and more unlikely as episodes proceeded, I felt I would not be able to bear an unhappy ending -- not after all the struggles and heartache and redemption he goes through. (I rarely connect so deeply with a drama character ...I was really wishing for a miracle). His relationship with his ex-wife was so quiet, tinged with the slight sadness of "what might have been" but their truly unbreakable bond was their child and that finally ends up defining everything in his life. How beautiful and how realistic! When the show finally did reach its inevitable conclusion, to my surprise, all the pieces actually just fit together naturally and made perfect sense. The writer brilliantly chose to deemphasize the tragedy and instead focused on all the other events that were rushing headlong in parallel. After all, life .... just goes on, doesn't it?
The final thing (and maybe this is the most important one) that I absolutely adored was the portrayal of truly strong women in this drama. There was not one nitwit in sight, no dolled up 30 yr old acting like a particularly dumb 13-year-old, no girl getting dragged around by her wrist like a rag doll in teetering high heels and loving it, and, actually hardly any romance to be found. The women here were REAL women -- strong professional characters, with their own mind, own ideas (gasp!), and ability to think independently and fast in high stress situations without needing to sink into a man's shoulder every 2nd breath. Other kdramas must learn from this one on how to portray strong women while keeping them sexy and attractive (after all this is showbiz).
I am now checking out all the other dramas from this writer because, did I mention, he is a genius! :-).
(Note : I gave a low rewatch value, because I think that once you know what's coming next, it may not be that interesting, and I don't rewatch much anyway.)
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