Secret Love Affair - Milhwe - 밀회

Knight in Silent Armour

Secret Love Affair is by no means a shabby movie. Even though its male protagonist does save our heroine, albeit not in the manner of shabby movies where they "completely flip out" to save the damsel in distress.  Rather it is an elegant, unhurried 16 episode long morality tale at the heart of which is a May-December romance. And its heroine is less damsel in distress than a damsel in unconscious wait for redemption. You maybe forgiven for the momentary thought of it being a mash up of The Piano Teacher and I am Love, with perhaps just a hint of The Beat That My Heart Skipped.  But it truly is it's own luminous thing shot through with both the romantic, poetic feeling and the absolute morality of many Korean works.  And in this it is possibly quite different from its source material.

Briefly the 16 episodes follow 40 something Oh Hye-won (Kim Hee-ae), calm and collected professional or an "elegant slave" to the filthy rich, whichever way you like it. Hye-won is a keeper of secrets that allow her a hold over her unscrupulous and opportunistic super rich employers but on more than one occasion the power imbalance is also clear.  Yet she is good at her job of leaving no trail of their dirty dealings (I shall never view music schools and arts foundations the same way again) and perhaps even relishes some of the power games as they unfold in offices and over mahjong sessions. And the job affords a fabulous lifestyle, albeit with a transparently ambitious and easily manipulated husband. That is until she meets Lee Sun-jae (Yoo Ah-in), genius self-taught pianist whose 20 year old self is incorruptible and not for sale. And as it happens, he falls deep in love, equally incorruptible, on a first glimpse of Hye-won. 

Post piano orgasm

Post piano cold shower

That romance unfolds over music. Hye-won herself played the piano as a young woman till an injury stopped a professional career. Music represents their inner selves, more than one character mentions that "Sun-jae plays like Hye-won" i.e. with a certain abandon and passion that cannot be taught. Like with Lucy Honeychurch, the implication is that if Hye-won lived as she played music, it would be exciting for everyone concerned. Just as much as with Sun-jae's playing which is also linked with the life he leads.  The scenes where Hye-won and Sun-jae play together are intentionally orgasmic in nature (a bit heavy handedly underlined by the script). Their attachment is a recognition at a deeper level of being indubitably connected, a fact recognised by Sun-jae instantly. It takes Hye-won longer to recognise this but once she does, she doesn't really turn back. In this, it's treatment of the romance is mature and made believable by the actors. Given so much turns on the two leads, they are excellent.

The world thinks about money more often than sex

 

But the romance is merely a catalyst to the larger questions posed by the drama.  Though a little squandered towards the latter episodes, an ensemble cast on good form provides the underpinning to these questions.  Hye-won's workplace is an arena where female ambitions are constantly played out. From ruthlessly ambitious wives to lonely yet vicious daughters whose social position is assured to Hye-won steely in her resolve to consolidate her social position to secretaries gauche in their desire for professional advancement, the drama differs from everything I have seen in showing female protagonists who are less empowered by careers and more compromised and corrupted by the pursuit of power and money.  The men fare no better, the family space itself is not sacrosanct.  Hye-won's husband is greedy and weak and loose cannon. On Sun-jae's side, his friends have both an easy morality and a morality that is mixed with a street toughness. The plot is largely driven by Hye-won's slow move towards understanding the hollowness of her existence and attempting to remove herself from it. And it is very slow.  Hye-won is complex - and it's a pleasure to watch an actress who can go from self-preservatory cunning to softness and doubt within a few scenes - she is deeply rooted in a corrupt world but also aware that the love and moral force that is Sun-jae is going to willy nilly propel her out of it.  Sun-jae is seemingly far simpler though the actor playing him pulls off the difficult task of conveying the moral steadfastness and purity of his person so that we too can see Hye-won seeing herself in the mirror that Sun-jae provides. And his character grows through the series without losing his essential self.

No plastic surgery then

The drama also touches on the lives we should live and what really matters.  There is a lot of reference to music biographies and artists. Music in fact as they say is a character in the movie. In the absence of musical knowledge, the finer points of this, the meaning behind the pieces is a little lost on the lay viewer. Nevertheless the pieces are placed in the episodes so that each piece conveys its meaning in the context of the episode.

And the answer was get thee to jail

Because Korean dramas often tend to be moral and idealistic in tone, throughout the episodes it is clear that the conclusion is unlikely to be open ended.  As restrained and realistic as it is, the drama requires Hye-won's purification and repentance. True as the drama is to the conventions of its culture, the end episode leaves the viewer in two minds. Because there is a dark side to Hye-won. In the absence of Sun-jae, she would have continued as before. Her friends for example (a lovely, sweet counterpoise to the sterility of Hye-won's life), tread the fine balance of being part of the system and yet keeping their values. Which is an alternative Hye-won has never chosen. In fact so unerring is her knowledge of the world she operates in that in the drama's concluding episodes, it is she who has the power to checkmate before overturning the chess board.   Sun-jae himself is troubled by this, it isn't even clear to him how willing she is to walk away from this.  And he himself is utterly moral to the core, it is all or nothing. Despite the build up to her moment of facing the truth about herself and the redemptive power of Sun-jae's love (in early sequences Sun-jae cleans the floor and stairs of his house, it is evoked later in the court scene almost like a broom and mop has been applied to Hye-won's soul), there is a small part of you that remains unconvinced. Perhaps the shortened run (it seemed to have an original 20 episode run) did not allow a complete exploration. There is in fact a slightly rushed quality to the later episodes.

Sun-jae applies his charm

 

For all that it is a satisfying conclusion holding both the promise of Sun-jae when Hye-won leaves prison and much more importantly the reclamation of  her true self.  Because redemption dramas tend to be male centric - think rise, fall, soul searching, atonement - all of which require a full engagement with the world - Secret Love Affair is quite unusual and perhaps even bold in its subject matter.

Shoe Sex

While Korean movies tend to be explicit in their depiction of sex, the dramas are often restrained. There are a few kisses and barely any skin in the scenes between Hye-won and Sun-jae in the drama. It doesn't in any way reduce the erotic charge between the leads and works to the drama's advantage in being with the overall mood of the piece.  Interestingly almost all the intimate scenes occur in Sun-jae's house or public spaces but rarely at Hye-won's home.  The idea of home recurs throughout the drama. Hye-won's house is a trophy home with not a note of colour.  Sun-jae's is shabby and lived in, crowded with things important to him. The idea of the two being home to each other is brought out now and then, Sun-jae's number is saved as "Home" on Hye-won's phone and in the drama's final moments Sun-jae indicates that where Hye-won is is home to him.

There are so many layers and details to the drama that it almost demands a re-watch.   There are a few missteps. There is self taught Sun-jae (go youtube!) but you can go along with that conceit. The death of Sun-jae's mother is a bit of a drama cliche.   Throughout Hye-won encounters situations that cause her to question her own position, one is with a lady in a restaurant who I think was a leftist in her youth and cannot be bought by money.  It somehow rings false.  There is a Billy Joel song called what else but "Piano Man" amidst all the exquisite music, though to be fair it is intended to evoke a specific time in Hye-won's youth.  And so on. Still those are minor quibbles in a work that asks you to be immersed in its thoughts and pleasures. And you are more than willing to be so immersed. 

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Not that it means anything but I was a little surprised by the classical music world depicted in this drama.  Western classical music as high culture in the East is a little surprising to Indians I suppose given that a similar work in India would be rooted in our own musical traditions.

Also Korean dramas seem to have a lot of female scriptwriters who seem to be quite well known. Far as I know it is true of Secret Love Affair too.