THE you worry about love and daily existence they can oppress the existence even to those who live in an earthly paradise, like the protagonists of Our Blues (available on Netflix).
Halfway between rom-com and dramedy, the new Korean series set (in fact) on the spectacular island of Jeju it is an examination – at times touching, at times funny and at others disarming – of a small and heterogeneous band of (in) usual characters. A fishing community where joys and dramas are consumed.
Specifically of four (potential) pairsfour different and complementary flirts for age, family and social background, emotional baggage and needs; four stories that tell romantic relationships with grace and intuition, without falls of passion, boredom or pathetism.
Our Blues: the four couples
Jeong Eun-hui (Lee Jung-eun) is a middle-aged woman of humble social background who has amassed substantial wealth. In her hand, vital and no-nonsense, she has remained the same person with the blunt and honest manners of youth. But the economic well-being brought her neither love nor family serenity. Choi Han-soo (Cha Seung-won) is instead a bank employee originally from Jeju who returns to the island in a pitiful state of mind: to support his daughter who is looking to break through as a professional golfer and the spendthrift wife is overwhelmed by debt. The two are former high school sweetheartsseeing each other again after a long time rekindles the old passion.
A captain of a fishing boat in his thirties, too good not to be a model (his interpreter is, however, Kim Woo-bin) is struck by a young girl with a questionable reputation, Lee Yeong-ok (Han Ji-min), by profession haenyeo (a woman who collects shellfish by diving and remaining in apnea for several minutes). Then, there is Lee Dong-seok (Lee Byung-hun), a street vendor who has not yet recovered from the seven-year-old refusal to Min Seon-ah (Shin Min-a), beautiful woman devastated by depression.
The last couple consists of two teenagers: Jung Hyun (Bae Hyun-sung) e Bang Young-joo (Roh Yoon-seo), who seem to be the least troubled couple. Were it not for the rivalry that consumes their respective fathers, employed at the fish market with Lee Jung-eun.
Shin Min-ah.
The island of dreams
The stormy sea, the sunny beaches, the picturesque fish marketthe houses of the ajumma that make the kimchi in floral leggings and pink rubber gloves. Thanks to these locations, suggestive and immobile over time, Our Blues favored part. More than anything else for the spectators, why the inhabitants of Jeju instead they feel surrounded by it. And oppressed.
In this common set, the characters share hangouts and knowledge – but to avoid the narrative line of one couple suffocate the other, the production has opted for a vertical plant, che alternates episodes dedicated to Jeong Eun-hui and Choi Han-su to those dedicated to Park Jeong-jun and Lee Yeong-ok (and so on). In doing so, the series maintains a compartmentalized subdivision without being watertight, allowing the microcosm of one character to gracefully invade that of another. The result is an impeccable balance of the narrative structure, a clean and orderly narration on the subtle influences between relations at the antipodes for age, background and trauma and personal, yet permeable.
Kim Woo-bin.
The cast
Much of the verisimilitude and naturalness of Our Blues it is thanks to the actors. Not really well known in these parts, apart from maybe Lee Byung-hun (it can be seen in Red 2, Terminator: Genisys And GI Joe – Revenge). But Lee, and of course the others are superstars in Asia: Lee Jung-Eun (the rich lady of the fish) was the maid of Parasite; Cha Seung-won has been South Korea’s most famous model for thirty years. Kim Woo-binanother supermodel, is the cause of much of the hype around Our Blues because the show marks his return to the screens after an absence since 2017 (due to a tumor).
Shin Min-ahin Kim’s girlfriend reality (and we wonder why they didn’t make a couple on screen too), she is famous for being the co-star with Lee Byung-Hun of one of the greatest cult cinema of the Hallyu (there Korean nouvelle vague), the noir A Bittersweet Life.
Cha-Seung-won.
The things you didn’t know about love
The ordinary stories of loves and relationships of Our Blues I am memorable sweet-and-love fairy talesrealistic and hypnotic, and they are thanks to the charisma of a handful of actors in a state of grace.
The empathy effect is strongbecause the evocation that one undergoes looking at these lovers goes to retrieve memories and personal fragmentsprobably from painful love stories, and on which we ask ourselves the reasons for the failure again. A roller coaster, but the rustle of the waves of the Jeju sea it mitigates even the most violent feelings – providing a satisfying inner calm.
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