The Candy and Bitter Okay-Drama “When Life Provides You Tangerines” Measures Life in 4 Seasons of Love | TV/Streaming
Thirty-four million 100 eighty-six thousand 600 ninety-eight minutes is one other manner of claiming 65 years. Over that point span, Ae-sun and Gwan-sik discover greater than one million methods to specific their adoration, however they hardly ever say the phrases. As an alternative, little by little, with acts of care, loyalty, and fierce safety, they climate all 4 seasons of their lives. Collectively.
Within the outdated world, a tangerine represented luck. To obtain one conveyed a blessing of fine fortune, however within the new Netflix drama, tangerines are synonymous with making lemonade. IU, the pop idol and main actress right here, says the English title is about utilizing the sourest tangerines life hurls at you to make a heat and soothing tea. Her character, Ae-sun, isn’t a straightforward particular person. She’s a superb woman trapped on Sixties Jeju Island in South Korea. Her mom, portrayed by the magnificent and sob-inducing Yeom Hye-ran, says, “It’s higher to be born a cow than to be born a girl in Jeju.” That means, girls are nothing greater than beasts of burden, like a cow or a water buffalo, perpetually made to hold the heaviest burdens.
This is applicable to Jeju’s iconic haenyeo, girls divers who harvest abalone and seaweed from the ocean ground. They’re the breadwinners, and but they by no means earn parity. Each flip of occasions within the first 4 episodes of “When Life Provides You Tangerines” illustrates this reality. Mockingly, IU’s Ae-sun is extra like a fox—vivid and excitable—however Park Bo-gum’s Gwan-sik resembles an ox—steadfast and powerful. Whereas As-sun rants, fights, and cries on the injustices in life, Gwan-sik is the quiet nurturer. He places her sneakers on for her, sells her cabbages on the market, and smoothes her hair.
As a Okay-drama or Korean drama fan, I hadn’t seen them in roles like these (and I’ve watched them tackle an array of characters). When the screeners for “Tangerines” landed in my inbox, I’d simply began a rewatch of IU’s common love & ghosts story, “Resort del Luna.” Subsequent on my checklist was “Howdy Monster,” the love & psychopaths sequence that made Park a sought-after actor by the business and the followers. They’re each the sort of artists who disappear into their characters, seamlessly integrating into the story they’re telling and pulling you into the world with them. They arrive by means of once more on this sequence by director Kim Gained-seok (“Sign” “My Mister”) and author Lim Sang-choon (“Struggle My Means” “When the Camellia Blooms”), however IU and Park aren’t alone of their roles. Veteran actors Moon So-ri (older Ae-Solar) and Park Hae-joon (older Gwan-sik) be a part of them in taking their characters by means of the complete cycle of life.
“When Life Provides You Tangerines” can’t be bothered with genres. It isn’t a melodrama or a comedy, a slice-of-life or a personality research, a romance or a thriller. It’s a end result of these issues. Painful when life is, crammed with humorous conditions, immersed in day-to-day residing, romantic due to their endless sort of love, and mysterious as a result of we’re by no means certain what’s coming their manner. One other thriller arises within the narrator’s identification, however I received’t spoil that for you.
“Their spring wasn’t a season to foster desires, however to interrupt them.”
With a hefty price range and a stellar forged capturing on location, the sequence is as wistful as it’s sumptuously shot and lit. Early on, there’s a scene when a constellation within the evening sky turns into the yellow helmets of the haenyeo divers bobbing within the sea. So fairly. The evening scenes are crisp and detailed, painted in a golden glow. Whereas the comedic scenes spin the digicam in angles that heighten the foolishness of all of it.
When you’ve by no means watched a Okay-drama outdoors of “Squid Sport” be ready for a slower tempo. One of many joys of tales like that is the way it unfolds just like the pages of a ebook; each episode is a chapter, revealing deeper which means to scenes you beforehand thought have been easy. Our Stalwart and Sassy Couple has a protracted option to go. The Korean title for the sequence is “Pokssak Sogatsuda,” a phrase which means “You’ve labored laborious” within the Jeju dialect. The labors Ae-sun and Gwan-sik endure are bittersweet. I cried as a lot as I giggled, and I hope it’s the identical for you. The sequence will launch with 4 out of 16 episodes on Friday, March 7, however Director Kim and Author Lim have already dealt out a full deck of feelings—I shudder in each worry and anticipation of what they’re going to do to us subsequent. The one factor left to say is: Convey it on. I’m hoping these tangerines are fortunate.
4 episodes screened for evaluate. Now on Netflix.
