Current mood:	calm
Entry tags:	doramas, la dolce vita, screencaps

La Dolce Vita: what is 'ennui' in Korean?
So, despite the fact that it's not yet entirely subbed, I started La Dolce Vita (the kdrama). LDV is a story of a 36-year-old housewife, trapped in an empty life and marriage, who finds out her husband has been unfaithful and it has turned into something more. She travels to Japan to kill herself (more out of impetus to do something, anything, in her life, than any jealousy or grief) and her paths cross with a young man ten years her junior, who is even more damaged than she is.

This drama reminds me of nothing else as much as a European art movie. It has a looping, non-linear structure (not only is the entire story told in flashback: the drama opens with apparent suicide of the young man, but there are flashbacks within flashbacks), a very subdued and washed-out palette, a cast of characters who are both intelligent and miserable (not to mention none of them are commendable individuals), the dialogue is full of allusions, and the whole world is sort of dreary.

I like it quite a lot so far (three eps in) but oh boy is it depressing.

Even the sex scene (yes, there is one) is not motivated by love or joy or even passion, but a certain desperation on the part of the heroine to feel something, anything, again, and to recapture a bit of her youth (it struck me so much that on seeing the mistress, she is not jealous her husband likes someone else, but is jealous of the girl's vitality and youth. It's made clear earlier her husband doesn't see her as sexual or feminine at all). (I am still not sure what motivates the young man to it: other than glimpses of some disturbing memories of his, we are still in the dark as to what motivates or moves him).

Also, like in a European art movie, they show things I don't normally associate with kdramas.

















(got these from soompi)