Call It Love is the first drama that impressed me so much that it is impossible to keep silent. More precisely, it penetrated the very heart and left an unbearably pleasant aftertaste. This is poetry in prose.
There is nothing superfluous about it, in my opinion. Despite the standard number of episodes, there is no sense of drag, no desire to turn off, postpone (and this often happens to me around the middle of the series). The minimum number of plots and the maximum amount of inner world of heroes. It is similar to the mini format, when you need to tell a story on a couple of pages of text. Without a detailed description, without endless dialogue about anything. It is like a song where in 5 minutes everything is said and we understand.
Color-cutting, staging, music, lines - all this creates an incredible vibe. This drama needs to be felt. Talking silence. The movement of the characters in the frame, which changes with the development of their relationship. The lack of passionate playfulness, and so vital, the tension between the couple. Nothing between them suddenly, I believe that the actors played 200 out of 100. I've seen them in other works, but here... Bravo!
Separately, I want to note the screensaver: an incredible aesthetic, personally I did not want to rewind it. You can just watch the screensaver, in it, in general, and compressed the main story in a short format.
A man stands on the side of the road with his head down. His lips shake, tears roll, freeze at the tip of his nose and drip on the asphalt. In front of him is a pedestrian crossing, a green light is lit, but he does not know where and why to go. How many times have we, suffocating, wept with self-pity, saddened because of problems that have aggravated ourselves, from the fact that we have suffered injustice for too long, from the fact that we have been betrayed, deceived, disliked. . .
Han Dong Jin, the main male character of this story, at first looks worthless and apathetic, he says about himself: "I have been weak since childhood" and "I am not interested in the suffering of others." He does not try to please, but behind his lowered head, slouchy back and shuffling gait, behind his slowness and detached look, a deep drama is guessed.
In his viscous and monotonous life unceremoniously falls rough and direct Shim Woo-Ju. She chooses Don Jean to take revenge on her father, his mistress and the cruel world in general. But for frank and harsh remarks, Don Jin receives only gratitude and a barely noticeable smile. Shim Woo-ju really needs him, like the man who put a mirror in front of him and showed him that it is impossible to live like this anymore.
Heroes are stuck in the one, but most tragic day of their lives. And from those very events, he hides in a tent, and she still cannot understand how others live quietly on, if she is so bad, if there is so much bitterness, hatred and disappointment in her life?
Characters with a completely different life philosophy: it is full of hatred and thirst for revenge, its principle of “an eye for an eye”, he is already accustomed to the blows of fate and is ready to turn the other cheek. Don Jin and Woo-Joo are like two lonely planets in a dark and cold universe, but contrary to all laws, there is an attraction and diffusion that is truly fascinating.
Here and the beautiful secondary characters: mercantile mother John Gina, like rust, corroding the lives of other people; an unfaithful ex; a devoted friend-shalopai; and the Wu-Ju family is an older sister who tries to be pleasant for everyone around, a younger brother who will not grow up, a gloomy mother and a faithful comrade who tries to direct the heroine on the path of creation.
Stately and beautiful actors Kim Yong-kwan (Han Dong Jin) and Lee Sung-gyun (Shim Woo-ju) in "Tell Me This Is Love" were deprived of their usual trump cards: he is a bright look of a confident man and a completely magical smile, she - her flirtatious playfulness, here they played subtly, whisper.
Music completes this state of whispering, it also quietly steals, slowly envelopes with sadness and inspiration. 'Tell me it's love' is sort of visually solved. In the picture added painfully pink color, which enhances the feeling of mental fatigue of the characters. With suffocating urban shootings, scenes in nature coexist, in which there is a lot of air, space and freedom.
This is a story about family and friendship, finding yourself and trying to learn how to interact with others. It found a place of hatred and love, suffocating loneliness and bottomless tenderness.
Among the shortcomings, I will name the incomprehensible stinginess of emotions in the scene after a walk along the forest trail and the crumpled ending. The finale was chronologically constructed in such a way that it was possible to write a scene as elegant and delicate as all the others, but it turned out hastily and incompletely. It was like we needed another 17 episodes.
The series is worth watching because of Don Jin, an amazing hero who is now one of my favorites. A small kind and weak at first glance, a person who grows in the eyes of the viewer to giant sizes.
8 out of 10
He's a resentful child. And although his childhood is long past, he continues to carry old grievances in his battered backpack, throwing new tragedies and painful memories in the course of his life. He took on the role of the head of the company, and although he does a good job, she sits on him like an expensive, but not by the standards of a sewn suit. He cut himself off from the world of thick hair crawling over his eyes, preferring to suffer alone with the persistence of the masochist, believing that he deserves this.
She's a girl with a wolf's eye. In contrast, he prefers any action to inaction. Taking on an exorbitant responsibility for the well-being of her family, naively thinking - if not her, then who? Exhausted by anger and resentment, blaming her misfortunes on the very aunt, setting herself the goal of revenge.
One day these two loneliness meet. They will be saved and healed for one another.
He beside her becomes a confident man who takes and does, abandoning the past ostrich strategy.
She next to him will allow herself to relax, to think, at last, about herself and not others, to forget about destructive hatred, letting into her heart first sympathy, and then love.
It's a very atmospheric movie. Starting with the screensaver of the film, which impresses with its originality and depth, the warm filters and setting of the frame create a special mood of unbearable longing and quiet sadness. There are no Shakespearean passions, there are long glances and meaningful silence.
Watching the metamorphosis of these two, you experience a painful feeling of longing, sometimes forgetting to breathe. And every episode is like a shot.
Definitely one of the most atmospheric films that plays on your feelings subtly and touches very deeply.
10 out of 10
This is the first drama where the back of the hero and the way he walks is a separate important image when you look at his back and see that he is lonely, stubborn or unhappy. She even says she hates his back because it's pathetic. And then, really, she says, "You know, the way a person walks, you can tell a lot about him." You will not give up.
This is one of the few dramas where the emphasis is not on the plot, but on the atmosphere, emotions, views and feelings. Even the plans on the shots are often built so that you understand how lonely the characters are, how big the world is, and they are small, how far they are from each other, although they would like to be closer.
If you want hot passions, adventure, detective, mysticism and the rest of the signs of an entertaining drama, then this is not here. And if you want depth, high-quality shooting, long looks and tenderness - here. And it's not boring.
From the family of the heroine at 17 years old leaves his father. She goes to her mother’s friend, taking her savings and jewelry, but leaving three children, of which she is the average. The mother gets cancer, the middle daughter takes care of the family, because of this does not receive a normal education and quits sports. The older sister is infantile, the younger brother takes care for granted, and not so much takes responsibility as behaves like a child. Her only support is a friend who pours her soju, gives her a shoulder and worries about her. And she wants revenge. She can't live knowing she lost everything, but she didn't do anything to the person who took it. She has lost her future, even the house where she lived for 20 years, and the son of a separation woman lives in luxury and knows no troubles!
And so, without a clear plan, she goes to take revenge, watches her victim, wants to know his weaknesses in order to hit him harder, so she often sees that very back. How he goes home slowly and tiredly, how he walks alone, walks decisively, walks, walks, walks.
Will she avenge or see in her enemy not his mother, but himself, as lonely as she is?
I must say that before this drama I didn’t like Kim Yong Kwan, he was just the third superfluous of Pinocchio, I don’t remember him at all. And here -- here it unfolded in a completely different way. When the hero is just watching, that’s the whole story. When the turn of his shoulders is at once support and weakness. It is as if even his height is his vulnerability, and smiles are so rare, and therefore so bright and long-awaited. Ideal role for the actor that he did. I will be following his filmography now.
I read that Lee Song Kyung specifically for this role tried to slouch to look like a kid. I did not notice the slouch, but she played wonderfully, she also wanted to calm and save.
I felt everything that I should have felt when watching the authors, and I was happy. You know, it was like reading a good book after a dozen mediocre ones, when even if it's sad, you're immersed and good.
“If you want to understand, forgive and love someone, watch them from behind for a while. Then you do not have to try to understand, forgive and love, because the loneliness of this person will make you cry. Understanding the loneliness of another is the beginning of love.
He is lonely, silent, patient and ready to take a hit.
His mother has been married many times and doesn’t care about anything but money. He left home early, and didn’t even see his mother for five years until he had to attend his stepfather’s funeral. His mother is his weakness, a huge gaping hole in his soul that he wants to hide so that no one notices. For a person, parents are the foundation, and he is deprived of it, because his own father died, and his mother he is ashamed, she is unpleasant to him, he evades her touch. Since this is a big puzzle of the soul, it will not work to hide it, just like the eternal symbolic battered backpack behind the back of an externally normally dressed hero. “He looks lonely and boring from the back. The back is the worst part. Although he is handsome, he carries his dark feelings on his back, says Woo Ju. She reads it well. For Han Dong Jin, his mother is like a cross that he must bear, accept and apologize to others forever. So he learned to be patient and silent. That's why I'm always ready to take a hit. So he didn't want to meet Min Young's mother, whom he had lived with for seven years. "Later," he brushed off. Because at such a rapprochement, everyone will know that he is a leper. So he, even when he found out that she was cheating on him, just kept quiet and lived with her for another year until she left him. “I have a lot of patience,” he says. At the time of the meeting of the main characters, Don Jean is in a state of deep loneliness and detachment. His house is empty, as if at any moment he would gather and run away. “The house is big, but there’s never anyone in it, like Don Jin’s shower,” says Ji Gu. The betrayal of the ex left a bleeding wound in him, which is shown to us with a refrain: the day Min Young said she was marrying another and abandoned him, he injured his hand on equipment. Then he cut himself on paper when he remembered the episode, and when years later Min Yeon appeared before him, he got drunk, fell on the glass and cut his hand. Then Uju bought him a patch. How symbolic. It is the beginning of his healing and change. He was in no hurry to get acquainted with Min Yeon’s mother, but more than once met with Wu Ju’s mother and even introduced Wu Ju to his beloved stepfather, who is like a father to him. Because of her, this eternally patient and silent man exploded with anger in an episode with a stone, like no one has ever seen him.
She is brisk, outwardly cold, but caring, sharp and ready to strike.
Ju has a leader in the family, an average daughter who actually behaves like the eldest and in general the head of the family. So she's used to taking responsibility, acting, not humiliating. Until the age of 17, Wu Ju lived in a full-fledged, happy family, but one day her father ran away with a mistress. Years later, she is going to take revenge on the son of this woman, who took away not only her father, but also the house after his death. It does not tolerate injustice and does not know how to bear blows in silence. To fight back is for her as an unconditional reflex, in fact, as well as to intercede for another. In the beginning, when U Ju and Don Jin were not yet acquainted, she stood up for him in front of the owner of the restaurant. He just kept quiet as usual. She also instinctively kicked the man who was flying to Don Jin with his fists. She is deeply incomprehensible to this eternal patient, who is silent and does nothing while he is “beaten.” She at first despises him for it, but gradually realizes the pain and loneliness he carries, and love is born in her. She maternally wants to take care of him and remove anyone who hurts. I just worry a little more about him (than other people and problems). I just want him to be less lonely.” She avenges his ex, cooks him a hangover soup, rescues him from under the wheels of the car and carefully sews on a detached button. A white button to a white shirt with black threads - yes, her feelings are visible and understandable to everyone but herself. “Why would you do that?” asked Don Jean. "Because I can," she replies. And that answer is the whole character of U Ju. Only a strong person can respond. In this world of individualism and selfishness, doing something simply because you can and not expecting anything in return is fortitude.
It is a story of love, healing and rebirth. Someone said that love always transforms. Yes, Wu Ju has gone from being cold, harsh, wanting revenge, to someone who, at the cost of his own comfort, wants to make a loved one happy, someone who tries not to offend, someone who finally forgives and lets go of the past and goes forward. Don Jean went from being lonely, withdrawn and detached to someone who jokes and laughs to someone who is happy and living for the first time. It changes in a way that friends notice and note.
This series is a rare case of real cinema in a drama format and an example of film impressionism. The image through the filter of the color of cherry flowers, elongated, distorted memories from childhood, a leisurely current that so infuriates many who are accustomed to living in the mode of “palli-palli”. Speed is an inevitable sliding on the surface, when it is important to do more, rather than dive deeper, feel, live, read the characters and emotions of the actors, and there is something here. Thank you to the man who decided to do this hairstyle for Yeon Kwan, covering the upper part of his face, because so his eyes became something incredibly deep, and how much he lived here and expressed them. Thank you to the creators for the aesthetic pleasure of watching this drama. There is excellent camera work, tender music, subtle directing, a beautiful, emotional script without clichés. Such works are few and stand alone. The main thing in them is not the external canvas of events, but the atmosphere and feelings, thanks to which something invaluable in yourself is born. Perhaps for me, this drama is number two, after My Liberation Diary, and the third number is My Ajossi. Such things should be savored, not swallowed on the run. Slowing down and contemplating history acts as a meditation in which not only the heroes but also the viewer are healed. Appreciate it.