4
Giuca
Lost in the Cloud....
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Intrigue & Love
Even though the official english title is very poetic, the other title on youtube videos is very fitting as it describes the plot precisely: intrigue, conspiracies, lies ...and love!As usual with these short dramas, the plot is rushed with added unnecessary complexities.
The plot is rather simple: the FL takes the place of a princess in order to kill the king and avenge her father. Her plan goes awry and she actually gets married to the northern king with the help of the queen who needs a spy in the northern kingdom. But our FL falls in love with the ML and together they uncover a conspiracy by the queen and her evil brother to create mayhem and distrust between other countries: divide and conquer.
The series is quite good: it changes from the usual chinese palace setting to the grassy plains and deserts of the north and therefore it is new and refreshing. The scenery is beautiful, the costumes are different from the usual flimsy drapes floating in the wind, the hairstyles are less elaborate and particularly ML's hair decorations are beautiful. The main actor is handsome and talented while the actress was ok: there was something bothering me about her but I cannot quite figure out what!
Maybe it was her character which bothered me the most?!? She is supposed to be a trained fighter but her skills come and go, depending on a situation or, more precisely, on her costume: when she's dressed all in black she is an excellent fighter but whenever she puts other coloured clothing she seems to become a clumsy clutz and from what I saw it was not on purpose! The ML's character becomes a bit silly towards the end: he's so much in love that he keeps following her around like a faithfull puppy, eyes filled with adoration!
I have to rant a bit: youtube go to hell with your rules and regulations! I wanted to watch the full movie version on youtube because it is more convenient but the drama is half soundless: we are not allowed to hear the music, so I guess it is the usual youtube problem with chinese music rights. I found the drama elsewhere and the songs are really beautiful (performed by a duet M/F) so it is really a shame to miss out on it! And youtube keeps insisting we subscribe: never gonna happen!
Anyway, the drama is a good short watch, the editing is a bit choppy, the two main characters are not totally convincing and the rest are rather simple though they do grow a little when they realize their mistakes. Episode 18 looks like the usual drama ending: the main couple is finally together and walking happily while gazing into each other's eyes so the additional two episodes to wrap up the loose ends I had frankly forgotten about is a bit of a change of mood after the happy ending.
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A Flower for Three Lives
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Flowers & betrayal
This short web drama is a surprisingly well made chinese GL: the relationship between two women cannot in any case be mistaken for friendship like they are forced to do for BLs. There are no kisses and that speaks volumes about the skilled storytelling!The title is fairly self explanatory: it is a love story spanning three lifetimes. A courtesan is betrayed and killed by her lover so with the help of her flower fairy she comes back to seek revenge and dies a second time. In the third life she is a flower fairy to but with a limited lifespan.
Story is a bit messy to begin with but as it is a short episodes' web drama that is to be expected. The actresses have good chemistry, the guy looks as creepy as the role demands, the special effects are quite good and the cinematography is excellent. All in all a very good short web drama....
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Love and art
I have been putting off watching this because of the ugly poster: it gives off negative vibes. It made me think that this would be a very weird and unpleasant story.I couldn't have been more wrong! This is pure and unadulterated fluff! Cute and sweet!
The plot is nothing original and has already been seen many, many times. A writer suffering from writer's block and down on her luck, meets a ghost of a woman in a coma. The ghost who is a painter, offers the writer to stay in her house in exchange for the writer's help sorting her business out before leaving.
There have been many versions of this story and you can see where it will end. Still, the acting is top notch, the two women have great chemistry. The production is correct. It is well crafted short web drama! I would like to know who painted the art on the walls in this drama. It is stunning and thought provoking!
The main topic, beside the love story, is art. How it is made? Why? What inspires you? Who do you make it for? The painter, who is successful sees the writer's struggles but she just watches from the sidelines, knowing from her own experience, that the writer needs to touch the bottom to realize she's going about the writing the wrong way!
This is really an excellent short drama!
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Please Don't Spoil Me Season 4
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Season 4/5: His turn now!
Our novelist is back home but in spite of all success, she is not happy, missing the emperor all the time. The Book Scholar erases her memory of falling into her own book. But the emperor suddenly shows up wanting to pick up where they left off. When the Book Scholar tries to send him back to his own world, he realizes that the emperor is connected to the novelist too much. She has to find a way to make him want to go back otherwise she's going to suffer because of his presence. Now the emperor has to learn how to live in the modern society.The comedy is back after the serious third chapter of this story. Unfortunately not as funny as before! Now it is his turn to be fish out of water and try to get used to the new setting. And just like the novelist in the first part, he gets comfortable very quickly and the focus of the story shifts to her workplace, friends and family. Mostly workplace as she tries to sell the sequel to her book and is having trouble being approved by the big boss. The workplace dynamics are quite fun to watch: the jealous supervisor, the love struck boss and his dragon of a mother big boss, the novelist's brainstorming team.... The relationship that stands out the most, though, is between the emperor and his secretary: there is a real bromance(without romance!) in the making there.
The big problem is the production value: the drama looks like their budget was cut in half: the cinematography is ugly, the colours are pale and when colours there are, they are obviously fake. The costumes are ugly, the hair is ugly (why does the emperor sport that horrible army buzzcut?). The music has been reduced to one song: I like it but I need variety.
Nevertheless, it is a fun watch, one cannot help but root for them and wonder if and how they are going to get their happy ending!
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Please Don't Spoil Me Season 3
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Season 3/5 The plot thickens...
And when the plot thickens, the things get to be too serious!It was to be expected after two funny and fluffy seasons that some things will have to be sorted out sooner or later and those things are not fun to sort out. So this season was very light on humour and heavy in difficult decisions!
The emperor and our novelist are finally openly in love and being lovey dovey while the entourage is rolling their eyes at all the fluff. But very quickly things start changing for the worse: the conspiracy fromented by the Dowager Empress and the PM is getting into the high gear. At the same time things keep happening to the emperor which are unexpected: the plague (COVID? Anyone?), him getting sick and week more and more often. And the reason is the FL whose unexpected presence completely changed the storyline and the emperor is quietly fading. To save him she needs to disappear.
I liked this season as much as the other two and was not much bothered by the absence of humour. I wanted to see how they were going to wrap the story up. And, frankly they did a great job! The story is basically a search for the man of your dreams and how great it would be to meet him. Our FL got to do that!
I will be repeating myself, but everything is excellent in this drama: from writing, acting, production values, music. I love the music!
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Clueless
I am always sorry to see all the wasted effort actors put into a mediocre result. And they were not shy about it like in majority of korean bls. I wish only the story was more interesting instead of just being a string of clichés.Starting with the most used and annoying one: childhood best friends who lost touch meet again twenty years later and pick things up where they left off. I wish that for once the childhood trope did not win.
Then there is the completely clueless man magnet, a former idol working as an intern and having three men chasing after him. On the other hand, he looks, behaves and has the understanding of a 12 year old. I don't really get why they would be all attracted to him. His innocence? He needs to be told straight what he has to know, subtlety is not within his comprehension. So the only man who is straight with him, wins! The other two men eventually console each other.
The other Jun, who wins, is a rich and smart individual but he looks off. There was something about him that did not sit right with me, he seemed shifty, manipulative, too smooth to be true. I am not saying that he is like that, he just looked like that. The casting was wrong: I could see that actor play charming and evil psychopath you cannot help but root for!
No one seemed to be bothered about boss/employee relationship. Sometimes I am having trouble accepting certain society rules being broken for the sake of fiction. On one hand, if the rules are not broken there would not be a drama. But what about if they are not mentioned at all? Should they be at least used as guidelines? Maybe in a perfect world! I am too much under the millennials' influence here. Vade retro !!!!
The worst was the music: annoying, soulless elevator music. The budget was tight I guess! The overall production was the ordinary korean web drama quality: cold and unimaginative though, for the first time I notice that the sound was better (no echo!) than it usually is.
It is a watchable webdrama. Instantly forgettable. Everything is a bit off here: pacing, writing, production, acting. If you need something short and not too heavy on brain cells, this is an adequate product. Nothing more, nothing less, just adequate!
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NOT for under 35 years old (in the west!)
This was funny fluffy & cute and I want more!The main couple in this drama is probably getting the extremely negative reaction in every western country (like mine!) under the rule of diversity, equality, feminism and cancellations. I can hear the voices screaming in outrage: grooming, trauma inducing, age gap! How dare they? Followed by collective cancellation campaign for the whole cast and crew!
I loved it! The story of Takane, a 26yr old heir to a conglomerate and Hana, a 16yr old highschoolgirl. Takane is brash, rude, arrogant while Hana is smart, insightful, strong and brave. The repeatedly clash and Takane is won over by her disdainful attitude towards his wealth. They bicker constantly and it is so much fun to watch. Takane's real personality comes out: kind, generous and sweet!
I do appreciate different, original and unorthodox stories: this one was more than I expected.
The only problem I had with it is the cinematography: everything is ugly here from the weather to the clothes to the sets.
The story seems to have a sequel: it is like they did not use all of the manga because even though it is a kind of a happy ending for the couple, there are many issues that have not been resolved and certain characters have been left hanging!
Thank you Japan for being still open minded, for breaking taboos, for not submitting to the present asepticized rules of engagement which rule the relationships in the West (i.e. Europe, UK, USA and Canada). These rules are ruining western entertainment: I can count on the fingers of ONE hand the western shows I have seen in the past 3 and a half years since I discovered asian dramas. The blandness and the extreme political correctness are disastrous.
That is why I would recommend this drama ONLY to people 35 and older, people who remember what entertainment industry in the west used to be!
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Osama ni Sasagu Kusuriyubi
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Palate cleansing cuteness
Frankly, the title of the top review was scary just like some comments so I was bracing myself for the worst. And the worst did not come!Yes it was fluffy but with fluff usually comes the superficial. So after a few episodes of fun, I stopped expecting anything profound and just enjoyed the ride. And coming off watching a korean makjang, this is just what I needed. Some predictable fluff is always welcome!
Ayako is the eldest of five children raised by loving parents. She is pretty, kind and generous and has been the envy of every women/girl she's ever met causing her numerous problems in school and at work. She faces everything with calm and a smile! Togo is her opposite: an only child of wealthy parents who put pressure on him to comply with the rules of the high society which is making him unhappy and cynical. They meet at a job interview and Ayako's words touched him so he ended up offering her a contract marriage which she accepts hoping to make her family's life a little easier with the payment she is receiving for the mariage. But Togo's mother is not happy with the arrangement so she schemes in the background in order to destroy Ayako and her family.
A few issues were raised in the comments section: a possible assault and the mother in law. The sexual assault never happened: she was just drunk and the SML put her to bed. And that's it! The mother's schemings which went unpunished were also understandable: she is someone who was forced to live the life someone else chose for her making her profoundly unhappy. Of course, this does not justify her dealings but I guess life had punished her enough.
Of course there were other issues: the drama is filled with tropes, misunderstandings, dead fish kisses, splitting up "for your own good", opposites attract, possibly evil ex boyfriend, evil mother in law etc.etc. But this is not meant to be taken seriously and if you decide to watch it just like the mindless fun it is, you are going to enjoy it. If you are looking for depth in treating issue (assault, parental pressures, rich vs. poor etc.) you should go watch something else.
The cast is excellent. The actress playing Ayako is pretty, cute and charming and she has big liquid eyes! Rather amazing!
What else? A cute, scene stealing dog, Ayako's amazing parents and siblings, Togo's father surprisingly understanding of his son's wish to be happy on his own terms.
I am glad that they toned down the manga original work: I never read it but I am fairly certain that manga has many OTT scenes and characters making faces and screaming. Just like any manga! None of that made it's way into this series. And it is so much better for it!
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For those who did not like the Thai original!
Before anything else, there are two things I need to make clear.One, I hated the original version with every fibre of my body! It had everything I dislike: it was over the top, with overwhelming second hand embarrassment cringe and it did not know which genre it is so it went from horrible slapstick comedy, to romance, to musical to soft porn and back. I finished watching it because I was still going through my "Never Drop Anything" phase which probably ended with this series.
Two - recent koreans bls have been a string of disappointments coupled with universally bad korean web drama production values: lack of warmth (probably due to bad cameras) and bad sound (obligatory echo when filmed indoors). So I keep watching K- bls hoping for another miracle like Hwang Da Seul (director of To My Star and Blueming) but I have not seen any.
I decided to watch this when my favourite reviewer said it was better than the thai version. And it was so so so much better.
The series follows four film school students who found themselves main character of a bl webnovel (no transmigration just the writer inspiration!). Like a self fulfilling prophecy, two couples are formed. Are they real couples or have they been created because of the popularity of the book? Or is it only a coincidence? Or did the author realize before those four guys what was happening between them? Or is everything just the plot of a movie those students are filming? Theories floating around are many!
The hows and the whys are many but are ultimately not important!
The first couple were enemies to lovers: the initial antagonists became friends and then more. The second couple was unrequited love: when SunWoo's unusual appearance unwittingly piques his crush's interest, things evolve quickly. Each character had its flaws. LeeWon, the actor, looks like an immature talentless slacker but is actually a principled, fair and sincere person. JiOh is a tall, stern and cold looking director student clashing with LeeWon: pushing his buttons to get a reaction from LeeWon, he changes completely when he falls in love. Sun Woo is a hardworking poor student with a chip on his shoulder, willing to help everyone but accepting no one's help. He's had a crush on YooKyeom, his school senior, rich and generous who hides many insecurities behind a warm smile and is very lonely.
The screenplay and the execution were excellent: funny without cringe (which could have happened with the sister-writer's fertile imagination, seeing things that were never there!), good butterflies inducing chemistry especially with the second couple (I definitely want to see more of them), zero annoying characters, a best helpful female friend. Main characters all change and develop during the drama, love correcting their minor flaws. Unlike the thai original, this drama is much shorter therefore there are fewer characters and the plot is tighter, there are no wasted moments.
The cast was perfect with one notable exception (see below!). They are handsome, have great chemistry and are not afraid of skinship which is rare in a korean bl! The casting of Lee Sang Min was interesting (zero issues with his acting!) because he reminded me so much of the actor who played Zon in the original (drama twins, I swear!).
I have two issues with this series.
One - casting of Lee Jung Min in a role of handsome, pretty actor. Unfortunately he is none of those so it was a bit hard to believe him to be a main lead character. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder: so let's not argue about this. It is very subjective and it sometimes influences my viewing pleasure. It did a little bit here. Fortunately the rest of the cast were perfect!
Two - very poor production values: non existent cinematography (everything is cold and ugly), empty sets (why does an university looks like a ghost town!),bad sound recording, sloppy and boring editing.
And in spite of these two major flaws, I loved it and I will be rewatching it sooner rather than later: it has everything I need for it to become another comfort blanket drama for when I'm feeling down!
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Hajimete Koi wo Shita Hi ni Yomu Hanashi
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Dense and clueless is cute?
The Story To Read When You First Fall In Love is the title of a book Harumi, the FL, throws down in anger and is really seen for the first time by Yuri.Harumi is, by all japanese standards, a failed individual. She was a smart studios pupil who failed to pas the prestigious Tokyo University entrance exam. She failed to get a good job and she failed to get married. Now she is 32 years old working without enthusiasm as a tutor in a low level cram school.
Yuri is a pink haired 16yr old high school student who is just waiting to grow up by sleeping on the desk in the worst high school. His father, in the last attempt to have him graduate at least from high school, takes him to Harumi's downtrodden cram school. Harumi is angered by the way he speaks of his son and throws the book down while telling the father off. Yuri is impressed and decides to start studying but only with Harumi. Because it was love at first sight for him.
Harumi is a woman lost, looking for the purpose in her life. Yuri gives her that and while teaching him, she starts to change as well. But not fast enough. Basically she's a sweet but completely dense, she's always been incapable of seeing what is right in front of her. There are three (maybe four) men in love with her and everyone around her noticed it except for her. While her being so dense was cute and adorable at the beginning it quickly became annoying and I kept wondering why do the man still insist on pursuing her!. She's rather straightforward, sweet and helpful, holds no grudges and does not really see anything bad in anyone. She is oblivious of other people's feelings though she is quick to see if someone is troubled (bullied etc.) and is quick to help: she is very clairvoyant in these situations. When it is about romantic feelings, she is totally ignorant! But she still lives with her parents and a huge fluffy dog (by far the best character in this drama!), she is pretty but dresses as a 50 year old spinster who had never dated (which is definitely her case!), wearing frilly blouses closed at the neck with huge ribbons. But on feet wearing stilettos. And some strange, asymmetrical coats. Ugly! On the other hand the pink haired guy was cool. Such an odd, unlikely pairing which probably will not last long: youthful arrogance will be soon replaced by adult reality!
While I was watching this, I liked it less and less as the story progresses. I kept saying to myself, it is a japanese drama, they are usually different, they tackle taboo themes, they are weird and original, you should not judge.... Still I could not help myself: the noona romance was not convincing enough: teacher/student and mother/son relationships were what I saw. And I love noona romances and have no problems with age differences but it did not work for me here. There are too many taboos broken by this drama for it to be convincing enough: 16 years age difference, a first cousin in love with Harumi, a divorced teacher who sacrifices his own happiness for a student....no, this was so wrong!
Apart from the FL and her three suitors, there was an interesting cast of support characters. Yuri's school friends were a strange lot: on the surface delinquents but not really. Supportive and kind and fun. Harumi's best friend Miwa, a no nonsense bar owner Harumi and her cousin both confide in. The parents were there as well but they worried more about work and exams than the romance. And of course, teachers in cram schools!
The drama surreptitiously denounces the exam system in Japan and the pressure parents and society puts on the young to succeed showing at the same time that you can be successful even if you do not go to top schools. It all depends on you!
I had another problem with this drama, apart from unconvincing pairings, which was the perceived length of each episode. Let me explain. Each episode is about an hour long. There are a lot of things happening, nothing is ever boring, no useless and superfluous events. And still I had the impression of extremely long episodes, like over two hours long. During the episode I kept checking the time stamp and repeatedly being surprised by how much I had left to watch; Such a weird feeling!
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Back To The Future meets Tunnel
I start watching anything that has time travel tag. Start, mind you, not necessarily finish though! So of course I had to see this!Year 2022: Yoon Young is an unhappy person. Her parents are a mess and she's bullied at work. One day she argues with her mother and later that evening she discovers she had been murdered. Sad and full of regrets, she wonders around and ends up in an freak car accident which takes her to 1987. There is a serial killer creating mayhem in the peaceful village and with the driver of the car, they have to stop him.
One episode was enough to see that the plot lifts heavily from both the movie and the drama. They mixed the two plots and frankly it works rather well. The plot manages to remain logical, because it stays mainly in the past so we really do not know if the repercussions on the future are more than cosmetic as it was shown in the last episode. Butterfly effect was not their priority. But characters' original unhappy and miserable lives were changed for the better. Most of plot points and characters were very predictable/cliché so I was a bit wary of the outcome. They managed to surprise me a little bit. Some of those plot points (plagiarism) were solved in a blink-and-you-miss-it rapid way.
The romance is not romancing very much though: apparently they fall in love and live happily ever after but their actions are not very obvious. They never touch each other's hands before the last minutes of the last episode. Zero kisses! Don't get me wrong, I do not need kisses and stuff in romance but this kind of restraint is so anti-climatic. The romance does not really change their characters which are emotionally stunted. It reminded me very much of Summer Strike: same kind of story without time travel!
The drama is a very very slow slow-burn mystery. I love slow burn dramas. But this one is on another level: so much so it took me over a week to go through the first half. I kept falling asleep. I almost dropped it because I was annoyed by the tropes and the predictability. But it got better in the second half. The plot was often very interesting and gripping but there are many many very long scene between the main leads, standing facing each other, five meters apart and talking with the speed of a snail (it felt like one word a minute).
Those scenes were rather pretty! Well done for the cinematography: fields, water, moonlit scenery. It was pretty to watch. The sets and costumes for 1987 were spot on. The hair was awful. It brought back some unpleasant memories! LOL
I have to congratulate the casting director: they managed to cast actors who look so much alike to play the same character in different time periods. It was uncanny! Of the rest, Kim Dong Woo was his usual self. I guess he is typecast always playing these stoic, cold, taciturn characters, men of few words. Well, if the shoe fits....Lee Ji Hyun, the actress playing Yoon YOung's mother in 2021 looks like a grandmother and she is the only miscast!
Time travel is notoriously difficult to write but they did it here masterfully. It is a good albeit a slow watch.
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In Between (Sa Pagitan ng Kamusta at Paalam)
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Good story, bad pacing: i.e. flashbacks inferno!
I feel I need to rant about this series! What it could and should have been and what it was not! Firstly, the title has nothing to do with the drama. It is a story about a couple: how they got together, how they broke up, how they got together again, a jealous interlude and the final happily ever after. There is nothing in between here! A normal A to Z romance plot! And then there is the pacing and editing which ruined a perfectly good show!It is a story of five close friends and their respective love lives. Two of them were secretly in a relationship but they broke up. Another one has been in a secret long distance relationship for years afraid to tell his best friends about it. One girl has a long-term boyfriend she feels getting more and more distant. And the last girl apparently has too high standards to date. The key issue treated here is communication and lack thereof in a relationship!
The group of friends are really good together, they talk a lot to each other and are supportive but secrets are many and are menacing to ruin their close friendship if not told or at least explained. The main couple are Tau and Tep who see each other for the first time one year after they broke up. They still have feelings for each other and they finally talk about everything realizing they are still in love so they get back together.
It is rather fluffy and superficial series: the most serious bit is the opening credits warning! The worst is of course the surprise! Why would people think that preparing a secret surprise is a good idea? We see it over and over again: one person wants to surprise the other one with a party or some such event and goes around talking in secret and hiding things from the other person who, seeing all this going on cannot help but be hurt and suspicious. And even when the person suspecting foul play talks and asks for explanation, his doubts are brushed away by the other person as sille. I find this extremely cruel. I've seen this repeating often in dramas and even though the person surprised forgives the stress, I find it ominous for their relationship. Here Tep even apologizes to Ri, Tau's coworker who helped him set up the surprise event, even though, we find out later, he was very much right about Ri having feelings for Tau.
Communication and honesty are the key: do not lie, hide things from your partner. It is hurtful! To gain acceptance, one needs to be truthful to oneself first and foremost and then to the people closest to you: friends and family.
So the problem with this series is not the story but the technical aspect: the editing mostly! There are 14 twenty minutes episode. Every episode is split in two parts of about 10 min each. Out of those 10 min there are about 3 min of credits, previously on and next on. Out of the remaining minutes there is about 4min of plot while the rest are flashbacks! This would have made a nice movie or a short maybe 6 episode series: there is not enough of plot for so many episodes which is a shame! The pacing is off: there are flashbacks of flashbacks, going back to past and from there further in the past but it is not often clear which past it is. The editing is confusing and you have to pay attention to the smallest details to understand which past is being told. There were also some continuity errors but silly ats that may be, it just adds to the lacking technical side of this drama.
Can somebody please edit this series? If you do that the rating will go through the roof: because there is nothing fundamentally
wrong with the plot or acting! It is a nice web drama. But that editing.....
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Wifi Society: Gray Secret
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Other people's secrets....
...are not ours to tell! The moral of the story! Do not force your world view on others! It can seriously backfire!Frame and Earth are close university friends. Earth is dating a 42 yr old man, Non, who is helping him finance his university expenses. The three of them often eat and drink together with Frame often taking faceless photos of the couple celebrating their love. Until one day Frame discovers that Earth's boyfriend is one of his university friend's father. He wants to tell it to Earth because he fears he'd be really hurt. Eventually, Frame realizes that Earth knows the truth already and is OK with it.
WiFi Society is a 2015 anthology series by GMM one and consisting of 27 different stories. There are unfortunately only two I managed to find subbed (in french) and they are BLs.
This story deals with secrets. Everyone seems to be keeping secrets from everyone else: closeted father, sugar daddy role, righteous conceited Frame, profiteering Earth. Secrets are meant not to be told because secrets can seriously hurt people. The father is keeping his homosexuality a secret from his family by dating a guy half his age. Earth does not care about his boyfriend's secrets as long as he continues helping him. Frame feels that the father's family is too big a secret to be kept from Earth not realizing that his friend is very much down to earth and realistic person: get what you can, when you can!
When you have secrets that can change your life if they are known, you have to accept the consequences of those secrets. Because, as we all know, secrets never stay secret for very long and there is always a "kind" soul willing to "help" by telling the secret out loud at the most inopportune moment of course. What Non is doing, leading a double life like he is, is bound to come out eventually and if he does nothing to sort it out beforehand, his whole life risks to be radically changed. Or maybe not! We never know how a person will react once they find the secret out: close their eyes and pretend they did not hear it or go ballistic!
Nous ne pouvons pas attendre que tout se passe comme nous le voulons. La seule chose que nous pouvons contrôler est notre esprit. Parfois la seule chose à faire, c'est arrêter de forcer. Et que les choses doivent rester comme elles sont censées être. Lâcher ne signifie pas que nous devons cesser de nous inquieter. Mais c'est comme ça que nous commençons à comprendre. Certaines vérités ne sont pas bonnes à dire, elles nous blessent quand nous les savons. Certaines vérités sont bonnes à dire, elles nous donnent de leçons quand nous les découvrons. Et certaines vérités ne sont ni bonnes ni mauvaises, elles sont si nuancées qu'elles doivent être gardées comme un...secret.
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Blued app short film ad
In a series of short film ads Blued produced, this one is for Mother's Day. So accordingly, this is a story about a mother coming to terms with her teenage son's burgeoning sexuality.The relationship between the mother and her son is precious. Mother is sad because she's not close to her son as much as she used to be: she notices the changes in her son. And while her son is getting more and more distant, the mother is worried and is looking for new means of communication with her son. Realizing that he is looking to identify where his penchant lies, the mother tries to talk to him through an app.
The "difficult-to-communicate" mother/son relationship is a usual one in adolescence and focusing this film on it is an excellent idea. Through misunderstandings, errors and generosity, they manage to mend the damaged relationship. The character of the mother is someone we all dream of having as a mother: kind, understanding, open minded and most of all loving unconditionally! Her son is a typical teen thinking the adults are the enemy.
The boy uses the app to try out a gay relationship: girls do nothing for him. The person who shows up is his schoolmate. Now here is the huge problem with this film: the schoolmate forces himself upon the boy! They eventually end up having a relationship, but was the force really necessary to make the point? This short scene shaved off two stars from my ratings.
It is a really good movie if you manage to make abstraction of a hugely problematic scene. The rest is perfect!
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Acceptance
On the surface, it is just a silly romcom about people meeting and breaking up. Something seen so many times. But just on the surface. Because the moment you throw in the mix gay main characters the story gets to be so much more than a simple romcom.The plot follows two best friends, HaNeul and Bong Shik and their relationships. HaNeul has been in a long-term relationship with a closeted man who does not dare tell his family that the person he loves deeply is a man. HaNeul finds that so frustrating and they keep fighting and breaking up repeatedly. Until one day HaNeul is kicked out and goes to squat with his friend Bong Shik. He is a youtuber who pretends he plays badminton. One day he catches the eye of a real badminton player who persist in hitting on him. Bur BongShik is does not want a relationship because he is HIV+.
The main characters are worried about acceptance, how the others see them and will they like them for what they are be it gay or ill or both. The actors are all extraordinary and the award goes to the actor who plays HaNeul, Lee Hong Nae: he is handsome, cute and so talented. He manages to bring to life the emotions and conflicts and fiery temperament. The other actors are just as good! And of course there is the staple of korean cinema and tv: the ajumma herself, Lee Jung Eun, brilliant as always.
Production values are rather low: this looks and feels like a short web movie. The kind you find loads of on youtube. But a bit longer. I guess they did not have much of a budget and the cameras they used must not have been very sophisticated because everything is so cold and clinically sharp. Because of it, I had a bit of trouble getting into the movie, I could not feel anything special about it. And then I realized I did. There is one song and it was hilarious: the guys at one point sing a silly song during their podcast and it is to be seen to be believed. Magic!
The director managed to make the film seem light and fluffy while correctly treating serious issues. Kudos! Well done!
This is a lovely movie and definitely a very good, uplifting rewatch! Go for it!
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