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. 

__*__

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. 

버스커 버스커 (Busker Busker)

K-pop is quite popular in Singapore. Not a fan. Or of K-indie music for that matter.

But I just can't stop listening to Busker Busker. Like anything at all from their albums. Even if it has resulted in a few Bas kar Bas kar jokes:)

Strathfield, NSW 2216

My first Korean drama post I think was more interesting for its description of Strathfield - or so I was told:) So I thought I might write a bit about the Australian suburbs I have lived in.

When I first moved to Sydney in 2002, I did some preliminary research on suburbs and my heart was set on Wollstonecraft or Bronte, purely for literary reasons:) And there was Glebe, where on a November day in 1999 I thought to myself one day I will live in this city. But when I saw the houses I hesitated. The rentals were high and of course that made a difference. But the charming cottages that were advertised turned out to be pocket sized and inconvenient. These were after all workers cottages in the 19th and 20th century that had gained serious cred simply by aging.  Eventually I decided to be a proper Asian immigrant and take a flat in Strathfield.

Even this was perhaps a little left-field because most Indians are wedded to the mortgage and a  proper house (preferably somewhere out west like Fairfield and beyond) within months of arrival.  In my firm, which was predominantly white, European attorneys would move to the eastern fringes with its beaches or the north shore. In fact Sydney has a enormous deal of suburb snobbery and it can be quite amusing to see the silent judgements being made when you mention where you live.  It didn't bother me, all postcodes being born equal as far as I was concerned:)

The reason for moving to Strathfield was fairly simple. It was well connected by train and it took me about 20 minutes to get to work in the city. Apart from this, it was one of few suburbs at that point that had high rise buildings and flats. There were in fact just a couple, squeezed into land along the tracks as is common in Sydney.  The buildings were mediocre - I still hold that Australians cannot design high rises, plumping for impractical open arrangements with a great deal of glass (making them furnaces in summer) intended to look like advertisements for modern city living or buildings that resembled hotels with long dark corridors.  Mine was the latter. But it was still better than the large expanse of suburbia that is most of Sydney.  The fringes of Sydney are beautiful but its interior is the death of the soul, suddenly all the anti-suburbia literature of the West makes sense.  There is a nothingness to this, as if you would be slowly numbed by these suburbs of similarly lined houses, a strip of the same shops in each centre with liquor, gambling and a supermarket predominant and a station that always led to a Railway Street. Strathfield on the other hand was an old suburb with pretty houses but the influx of immigrants and buildings with shops beneath meant that it remained lively even at a late hour. This was a big deal to me, because at this point almost all of Sydney would fade away by 6 pm.  In fact everything started early and ended early, not the best situation for a night owl like me. The other factor was my father's intended visits, I did not want the usual fate of parents in these cities, the endless wait for someone with a car to take you around to show the sights. This way he could see the city on his own time.

My building in Strathfield had a formidable Russian lady as the manager who was completely intolerant regarding the rules of the building. To put it politely she was a f**king pain in the arse. There was, as can be common in Sydney, a Russian club around the corner and a few other Eastern European structures from memory. The flat itself was comfortable, I had taken a 2 bedder as my brother was to join me later. One peculiarity of the building (and later I found of every other building in Strathfield) was that the fire alarm went off every day. The building was full of Koreans and everyone blamed their cooking practices. But given the regularity I suspect there was something a little more to it, perhaps a cosy arrangement between building management and the fireies.

As I mentioned earlier, the parts of the suburb near the station were full of Koreans.  There used to be minor gripes from visitors about not understanding signage etc. but it never affected me. It stood to reason that if you were an immigrant with little or no knowledge of English, you would aggregate in an area and that any services provided would need to cater to the local community.  Often the lack of English meant that communication was difficult, not that many people tried. This was in fact a characteristic of Sydney, even someone you see for years may not acknowledge you-initially it feels racial till you realise that everyone has had the Sydney cold shoulder and even new arrivals slip into this mode of behaviour.  A lot of folk who ran small services were however pleasant. The flower seller was a a sweet lady. There was a store that did small time repairs on clothes, handbags etc - it's a little hard to explain here that there was a joy in this because it's so hard to find in Sydney. For the most part, we didn't really eat out at the Korean places - though I always wanted to try the piquantly named Mr Dduckbocki Miss Kkochi. Instead for Asian, almost all of Strathfield, went to the Saigon Bowl - though it wasn't the best in town it set me off on love for Vietnamese cuisine. And of course there was the little clothes shop which didn't break the bank but had stylish office wear that lasted forever.  For I found that all my shopping for Sydney had been for nought, nothing was proper for Sydney mores or the weather. One thing that came out of my stay in Strathfield was that to date I know when Korean is being spoken.  I heard a lot of it and it became easy to distinguish (the alphabets too but that is relatively simple to differentiate) from other Asian languages.

Strathfield in fact also had an Indian presence though this grew stronger as you moved towards Homebush. There were more than a few Indian stores and towards Homebush you could also get cheap dosais and the like.  In this sense, it was perfect for a newbie to the city.

I lived in two of the apartment complexes in Strathfield till I moved out in 2006. The second one had a Macedonian manager who was polite and never failed to remind me that Alexander the Great was Macedonian. He had learnt a bit of Korean which meant he was popular with the residents and was in fact planning a visit to Korea when I left.  The building itself was like a plush hotel complete with indoor swimming pool.  Despite all this staying in the complexes wasn't a bad decision given the fact the burglary was fairly common in Strathfield's small apartment blocks with little or no security.

In a way Strathfield was an ideal way to ease into Sydney. It had familiar Indian elements and wildly different ones. Travelling was simple. It was easy for my dad to get around. My family in Sydney was close and yet not too close. Old relos who came around actually liked the sound of trains and shops below, unlike the natives. Signs of life as it were. My decision to go neither East nor West of the city in the initial years served me well.

I had arrived in Sydney in the somewhat contradictory states of excitement and clinical depression. These ebbed and flowed, in the beginning I was anxious to return home once I got my degree. Events back home had left a peculiar kind of hurt, the reasons were insufficient to feel so much and yet all these messy emotions were there. A lot happened in those 4 years. By the time I left I was in a calmer frame of mind, I had settled into my job, I had a degree and I had decided to stay on a bit more.

K-Drama Overload

Eun-chan and food

I feel like I have watched one too many Korean dramas. This was partially because I was knocked out by a minor illness for nearly a month and it was an easy watch to while away the hours. In retrospect it wasn't a huge number of dramas though sufficient to pick up Korean TV tropes:)  Hello My Teacher and Pasta was largely because of my Gong Hyo-jin love (I first saw her in this segment on a flight, nothing special about the segment but I noticed her and I have liked her in almost everything I have seen, the best of her work being Crush and Blush). Hello My Teacher's "noona romance" was cute and I surprisingly liked Pasta's depiction of a somewhat sadomasochistic romance. I tried Lovers in Prague (what's with lame Korean drama titles-and let's never speak of the soundtracks) but gave up despite it starring one of my favourite Korean actresses, Jun Do-yeon.  But the best was reserved for the last, Coffee Prince. It was one of those dramas that suffuse one with a happy feeling at the end, kind of like watching 17 episodes of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (though the lead actor reminded me more of Shahrukh).  It's a great ensemble cast, where the casting is right for even the small parts.  And it has a secondary romance with a girl who doesn't go in for simpering innocence or fidelity. And it is based on a novel - novels that are rooted in genres (in this case romantic fiction and with more than a nod to Shakespearean cross-dressing tropes) but try to do more with it than a paint by numbers plot are always intriguing, if the TV serial is any indication the novel is neatly plotted and well thought out. But without doubt, the thing that makes Coffee Prince such a great drama is Yoon Eun-hye's portrayal of the garçon manqué, Eun chan, who never changes colours.  There has never been a better or more adorable tomboy on film. So if you have to watch a Korean drama, let it be Coffee Prince!

I am not the greatest fan of TV dramas, it is hard for me to sustain interest even in something like Mad Men.  Few K-dramas are perfect and there is a similarity to them once you watch a few - yet they have a certain hook which keeps you watching. But I can't see anything topping Coffee Prince so I will give it a rest. Though for research sake I should probably watch the original K-drama that started it all, Winter Sonata:)

Watching K-Dramas

I miss the DVD/CD shops in Sydney, for the most part English titles here are predictable American fare and its quite rare to spot a world section. So basically no European cinema. You do see a lot of Asian titles though, particularly TV Drama box-sets, and browsing through them is educational and a tad amusing. The other day a mega sale was on and the enterprising salesman, eager to break my K-Drama virginity (well he didn't use those exact words), recommended a few.  Apparently they are quite the thing around these parts. Ultimately I went with Jejungwon because it seemed a sciencey historical as opposed to the spicy sexy court intrigue saga which many appeared to be. At $10 for 40 episodes, it wasn't exactly expensive either. Also HANBOKS! If there is one garment that I will concede right away is superior to the sari, it is the hanbok. And indeed behold their glory in Jejungwon. 

 

HANBOK LUST

In the end it turned out to be not quite the epic it wanted to be and at 40 eps it was a bit much for me but it did get me thinking of a few things. Like I had kind of forgotten that in my first few years in Sydney I lived in a suburb that was very much Little Korea. There wasn't any particular reason for choosing the suburb except it was close to work. Plus I lived in several suburbs in Sydney simply to get a flavour of different cultures.  The Koreans were considered insular but this hardly bothered me, in my experience as an Army brat it's rare not to encounter insularity.  And they were  nice enough people, there were a lot of smiles but little talk due to the language barrier though now and then someone would use a few words of Hindi.  I in turn got used to the pleasant cadences of the Korean language. The suburb was pretty much run by and for Koreans, at the cafe below staff would look a bit bemused if we wandered in for coffee.  The best part for me was a wonderful clothes store which was affordable and stocked clothing in sizes I could wear, the stuff there lasted me for ever.  Several years later I moved out to a very white part of Sydney which was a different experience in itself.

In my first few years in Sydney I used to watch a lot of Asian cinema, partly because my brother had been in Shanghai and I had spent a few weeks there. The rental stores always carried Asian titles and you could count on a few releases given this was a time when a few independent cinemas actually existed in Sydney.  Korean cinema was hyped up in the papers as must see cinema so we duly went along to see a few. Plus SBS would screen a lot of foreign cinema (sadly this is also a casualty of restructuring and changes at the station and the fare is less varied these days).  Offhand now I can recollect Spring Summer..., 3-Iron, Oldboy (probably the most well known), Il Mare etc.  Each of the movies was engaging but it left you feeling that something was not right or incomplete (I often have this feeling with Indian movies too) and more often than not if I had to compile a top ten list in those years it would have included a Chinese or Japanese movie instead of a Korean one.  I still watch Korean movies, particularly on flights. They are always watchable, beautiful to look at and stocked with beautiful people and yet its hard to find a piece that is exceptional. And more often than not they are marred by a sense of melodrama. The only exception to this is Untold Scandal, which to me is the best version EVER of Dangerous Liaisons. So it maybe that I prefer the restraint and amorality of the Japanese:) Having said that the Koreans employ melodrama very well. It never rings false as in a Hollywood movie neither is it loud and stretched beyond belief as in an Indian movie. It can be a superior work like Pieta. Or a shamelessly manipulative movie like The Way Home. But some underlying purity of intent will make you bawl at the end, promise yourself to call your grandmother often and be completely embarrassed at being taken in by its manipulation:) 

So much ink has been spilled on K-Pop, Hallyu, K-Drama and the like that it's not my intention to add to it (though no doubt my take on it is different being Indian). Suffice it to say that they are inventive and dabble in far more genres than Indian cinema is capable of but also have the "hook" that reels in devotees of popular culture.  It is a created world that is as enticing as anything set up by Hollywood or Bollywood.  There is one small difference - perhaps because the vitality of the industry is fairly recent - and that is that despite all the artifice and created glamour and melodrama, some kind of true and pure feeling runs underneath. It is there in varying degrees, in the best it is there in spades, in the worst absent.  What Korean visual culture lacks in subtlety it makes up with this. All the more because it is so much absent in most modern cinema where more often than not the only  two modes available are irony and crassness. In that context, a number of Korean films are also chaste, the TV dramas even more so. While the movies are more experimental, there is still some degree of sexual reserve.

Coming back to Jejungwon, all of this is true of the serial (which as it happens was not entirely successful). Taking in the rise of its hero from a member of the untouchable caste  to a senior doctor in Korea's first Western hospital (the eponymous Jejungwon), it opts for a broad brush treatment.  The good are very good, the bad are very bad, it is timid in its treatment of the politics of the era and the hero rarely catches a break before ultimately triumphing.  Really not terribly different from an Indian drama of the 1950s, this in fact comes equipped with a Nagesh like light relief character too.  All its tropes will be familiar from Indian cinema (this is not to say it is inspired by Indian cinema, rather there are some common sensibilities at work in Asia). Despite all this it has its pleasures. And it is subtle and moving in parts.

#EXCUSE THEIR BEAUTY

#WEST IS BEST

One of the pleasures for a history buff of course is that you can go back and look at actual events that took place (most wtf moment, what the Japanese killed and burned a Korean Queen?!). Unsurprisingly most of the Japanese in the series exist only as villains (except for the filmic cliche of a Japanese girl falling in love with a Korean aristocrat-doctor). Neither was I aware of a rigid caste system in Korea, in fact the country appears to have been in the grip of strangulating mores for a long time. It also turned out that a number of run of the mill dramas I had seen inflight (Masquerade, A Frozen Flower) were not set in some vaguely mythical past but set in specific periods of the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties (the Koreans seem to be on par with the British in their love of period dramas). As far as I can see even the costuming is specific, the hanboks of Jejungwon change with time.

The other is that its three main characters, roughly the poor, ostracised and bright boy, the aristocrat-scientist and the emancipated beauty, are nicely etched.  Their actions for the most part make sense and despite the archetypes they are cast as, they seem real and the actors do their parts more than justice. The three main leads and some of the smaller parts are solidly cast (though at times some visible plastic surgery is a distraction:)). Again despite the flaws - the melodrama and lack of subtlety principally - something runs underneath that tugs at you in much the same way as if it were real. But the most remarkable feature of the drama for me was the female protagonist, Seok-Ran (played by Han Hye-jin). Neither an aristocrat nor middle class, her character has freedom and an understanding father who allows her to make her own choices which include becoming a doctor.  Her choice of the outcast hero makes perfect sense within the context of the drama.  But at no point does the drama confine her or define her by this romance.  Which is remarkable given how much I have read about sexism in Korea and its arts (obviously not all that true or rather more complex than usually portrayed). Everything about the character is so perfectly judged that neither does it set up the progressive/reactionary doomed sexual relationship like many Western dramas (Howard's End, South Riding) nor does it go in for the complete devotion and self-abasement demanded of women in Indian dramas. Rather Seok-Ran is intellectually curious and devoted to her career, tops the exams over the two men who love her and if required chooses her calling over her husband.  None of this is shown as out of the ordinary nor does she lose her husband over it, rather throughout she is strong and compassionate and respected for it. She is an inspirational heroine in a middling drama and Hye-jin's performance never falters even for a moment.  You know you cannot be her but you would like to be Seok-Ran. It also reminded me of a movie I saw in Australia which was much lighter in tone (Private Eye) and where the actress had a small role but the character was similarly a turn of the century inventor in firm charge of her own life.

The other major factor in Korean dramas from what I can see is the parental relationship. Almost everything I have seen explores the bond from its most dysfunctional and yet unbreakable (many fathers with an undercurrent of violence!) to filial devotion, especially for a mother. Korean cinema treats this particularly well and it also embeds the romance in the context of these relationships, often in a far better way than Indian movies. Jejungwon is no different.  For e.g. Jejungwon's central scene is the acknowledgement by a son of his father and though played for effect and very weepy, it is also strangely affecting.

And on that note let it be said that no Korean man in cinema or TV land is afraid of crying-the violence, the romance, the tears must have surely resulted in many pop cultural studies  deconstructing Korean masculinity:) This being Korea the tears are bountiful and perfect, almost beautiful on the male face so to say:)  Move over Rajendra Kumar and Shahrukh, your cry face is simply no match!

#CRY FOR KOREA

#UNSPILLED TEARS FOR KOREA

I may or may not be on my way to a K-Drama addiction...we will see:) In the meantime though I do need a break from 40 hrs of viewing so you might have to wait awhile.  Next up...possibly The Painter of the Wind.