Man and Woman (2023)

About a love that has somehow lost its suitability for everyday life over the years

“Between Him and Her” is an alternative to the tried and tested Cinderella love story, which usually ends with a supposedly “they lived together happily ever after”. Therefore, this story is about 7 years later...

The KDrama is rather down-to-earth. It is set within the world of young creatives of Seoul´s fashion scene and tells about a love that has somehow lost its suitability for everyday life over the years. A love that became a habit.

Eventually, a critical moment causes the barrel of internal, unnamed, silent, consuming dissatisfaction to overflow and thus gives necessary strength to actually question everything. However, questioning everything also means having to ask yourself the unpleasant questions. Unfortunately, the answers are not clearly “yes” or “no”. They´re lurking subtly, are not always logical, nor pragmatic or even negotiable. Sometimes it's a "Yes. But." Sometimes it's a "No. But." The problem is: whether it's "yes" or "no", both are true. Love is not always automatically suitable for a partnership... and even if so, this cannot be considered a given either. Nevertheless, that doesn't make such a love any less true or valuable.

For outsiders, on the other hand, the matter may seem more evident. As a audience, we might want to shake one or the other. But in the end the answer unfolds exclusively from within the very personal, complicated emotional world of him and her. Nobody else can have a say. And the KDrama conveys that quite vividly, rather authentic and painfully realistic, too.

Accordingly, the pacing as the two protagonists are taking stock of their emotional relationship, is rather cautious and introspective. Therefore, subplots are providing some invigorating comedy and a bit of drama on the outside, thus pleasantly topping off this little study on certain facets about love.

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