Little Women (2022)

A Veritable Dollhouse of Absurdity

The experience of watching this so-called homage to Louisa M. Alcott’s beloved tale is like playing a game of blind man’s bluff. The audience is positioned as the player in the middle, blind-folded, groping around trying to make sense of the surroundings only to be led by a cacophony of sounds which may either prove to be helpful leads or egregious misdirections that lead to nowhere. Rather than being any kind of thoughtful of adaptation of Alcott’s timeless series, the roots of this Korean drama lie in the overlong weekend family dramas infamous for their ridiculous plot lines punctuated by unbelievable twists and turns, protracted conflicts that are designed to leave audiences begging for more week after week. It’s a combination of pure farce, high melodrama and an unabashed (even gleeful) exploitation of tropes. Polished as it may be, it is still a makjang. From the first, this story positions itself as a morality tale cautioning against the consequences of greed and ambition from its use of the red shoes motif only to end up with a bewildering incoherent resolution that undermines the story’s early messaging.

The show throws the spotlight on two adult sisters from a working class background. They are Oh In-joo (Kim Go-eun), Oh In-kyung (Nam Ji-hyun) as well as their teenage sister Oh In-hye (Park Ji-hoo), a talented artist who has caught the eye of a certain Ms Won Sang-a (Uhm Ji-won), an ambitious wealthy woman who is married to an aspiring politician Park Jae-sang (Uhm Ki-hoon). The unsuspecting Oh sisters who lament their meagre lot in life are drawn into a web of deception on a scale that they are laughably ill-equipped to handle. It suits the writer’s agenda to place these babes in the woods in such an unlikely situation as they flounder around in search of answers.

The real trouble begins when In-joo a bookkeeper finds herself tempted by the offer of 2 billion won of cash left to her at the pleasure of her colleague Jin Hwa-young in a gym locker. It’s more money than In-joo has ever seen in her young life but it comes with a high price tag and puts her in an ethical predicament. Apparently Hwa-young has been playing around with Other People’s money and suffered the consequences. In-joo is in over her head and it’s Choi Do-il (Wi Ha-joon), her company’s accounting manager and money laundering expert, to rescue. Apparently the company has a habit of accumulating ill-gotten money and key people in the organization are involved in helping the Park-Won family creating slush funds to further their political ambitions.

While the performances range from great (Kim Go-eun, Wi Ha-joon and Uhm Ji-won) to good, in the overall scheme of things the characters don’t matter much because they are quite literally putty in someone’s hands. They exist to tell a story like miniatures in a diorama or figures in a dollhouse. The dollhouse metaphor is deliberate on the part of the writer who wants to weave a fairytale about the ordinary confronting the extraordinary similar to any Brothers Grimm tale. While there are no talking animals or supernatural beings in the mix, the show nevertheless relies heavily on miracles. The Oh sisters are fated to embark on a journey through a dark forest of evil and they cannot be certain who is friend or foe. They are almost always somebody’s plaything and dependant on the goodwill of others for their survival. There is an appearance of agency but the Oh sisters can only react to the situations they inevitably find themselves in due to the machinations of others.

There’s little that is relatable about the Oh sisters. They act impetuously in service of the plot. There’s nothing realistic about them or the situation they find themselves. At times it’s hard to believe that they might have been a close-knit family once when they spend far more time with others than each other. Using In-joo and In-kyung in particular as the primary windows into this world is a double-edged sword. More often than not their supposed bravery comes across as recklessness and lack of circumspection.

Won Sang-a the show’s primary antagonist fancies herself an unfulfilled thespian and plays out her fantasies with lesser mortals. She’s General Won’s daughter and her wealth enables her to indulge in her narcissism and megalomania. She likes secrets and she takes perverse pleasure in gamefying scenarios involving desperate malleable individuals where she commands their inevitable outcome. On the other hand her relationship with husband Park Jae-sang involves a series of sex games in which she manipulates him while he enables and cleans up after her. At first it seems like he’s a controlling abusive husband but it doesn’t take long before it’s clear who’s really calling the shots in that dynamic. She represents the figure of the witch that’s the staple of many beloved fairytale as she’s an inveterate schemer and master manipulator that casts her spell on those she deems dispensable.

In that vein Little Women is a witch’s brew as it mixes high stakes criminal activities with family dysfunction, romances and a conspiracy that goes back decades. The set-up brimming with potential, hitting the climax in Episode 10 only to end with a whimper in Episode 12. For a show that traded relentlessly on plot twists and shock factor, the finale felt strangely flat and mind numbingly… tedious. In effect the writer overplayed her hand ad absurdism; to the point where the final showdown between the protagonist and antagonist feels comedic rather than revelatory thus diminishing the impact of the moment.

Despite the title, the highlight of the viewing experience is Choi Do-il, who grounds the show for me. Almost everything else about the show is a farce in every sense but Do-il feels like a bright spot in a bleakly surreal landscape and more’s the pity that this show isn’t about him. Although he makes claims to being entirely mercenary, he is the sanest creature in this cat and mouse insanity — a reassuring constant in a sea of madness for the artless In-joo. He is her lifeline from start to finish. Without him she would be six foot under or ashes in an urn. The romantic tension between them evidenced from the start regrettably doesn’t have closure which begs the question — is the show leaving the door open for a second series?

A show like this can be an engaging watch depending on mood and the extent one is willing to suspend all manner of disbelief because at the end of the day such dramas don’t exactly prioritise logic or consistency.

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