Rang Mai Hua Jai Derm (2016)

First things first, I loved the idea and the execution of the body-swap trope in this lakorn (or not exactly a 'swap' as we know it). The main character Pat witnesses her long-time sweetheart and husband on top of another woman in a hotel room, storms off for her car, gets into an accident, and dies. Meanwhile, Nalan, a weak-hearted woman who's been living a simple and sheltered life hitherto receives photos and a note telling her that her husband is cheating on her. She catches him in the act and faints on the spot. Nalan and Pat are brought into the ICU at the same time. While Pat dies, Nalan has a chance to survive only if she gets an immediate heart transplant. Nalan's father who's also chief physician and owner of the hospital, seizes the opportunity and transfers, without consent, Pat's heart into Nalan in a desperate attempt to save his own daughter. What he doesn't know is that he ends up saving Pat who wakes up in Nalan's body several hours after the surgery.
A reborn woman, Pat now goes on a quest for revenge against her husband by plotting to make him fall in love with her and then dumping him to give him a taste of the emotional trauma he put her through. In the process, however, she finds herself falling for him anew and with a different body and a new set of eyes she starts to see the true colours and intentions of those around her.

The story itself sounds promising and for the most part, it is. A thing worth noting is that Pat's revenge is more of an emotional revenge. In her own way, she gets back at her husband, but not in the literal sense that we're so used to seeing in revenge dramas. As a person who suddenly has to face life trapped inside someone else's body, she is first perplexed and stays indecisive for a long time before taking action. When she finally puts her decisions into action it doesn't take long before she has a change of heart (no pun intended), but as viewers, we completely follow and understand why.

View's acting was for me deserving of respect. I must admit I had my doubts and didn't expect she'd be able to go from portraying the sweet and meek Nalan to portraying the same woman (her body) inhabited by the soul of the fierce and strong-headed Pat (played by Jeab in the initial episodes). However, she pulled off both characters with flying colours. Even her make-up and way of dressing changed accordingly. Her chemistry with Tui is also worth mentioning. Despite the age gap, View and Tui looked good together and delivered some realistic chemistry and an ample amount of (real) kiss/hug scenes.

Now for the things that didn't work for me: The side characters.
Lakorns are notorious for their cardboard-like characters but this one probably tops them all. With the exception of Pat, her husband Win and her gay best friend Noojoon, all the characters sucked the soul out of me (again, no pun intended). Characters are often most cardboard-like when they exist only for some superficial purpose: making the protagonist look good or the villain look bad. The side characters in this lakorn (and even the villains) were poorly written, hard to take seriously and most of the time served no other purpose than to blatantly annoy the crap of out the viewer. You can't help but wonder why they'd even waste filming time and budget to bring such useless characters to live.

Overall, an enjoyable lakorn that could have been written more tightly and executed better had the characters been more layered and believable. Otherwise, if this still sounds like your cup of tea, I say go for it. A good thing is, the episodes aren't longer than 56 min each, making it a fairly easy watch.

Happy watching!

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