Love Rain

Expo was Yesterday!!! But I was more in the TV shows scene this time (Adventure Time, Teen Wolf, etc.) so I won't clog my blog up with a post about that!! Instead, enjoy this review while I get on the train to go to my mum's! :)

Love Rain is a masterful drama that depicts a cycle of misfortune starting in 1970's and repeating itself in the present. It starts when Seo In Ha falls in love with beautiful and kind Kim Yoon Hee, and she falls in love with him. However Seo In Ha's best friend Lee Dong Wook falls in love with the very same girl making Seo In Ha choose between the two. He tries to escape by enlisting in the army and Kim Yoon Hee has to move to America to get treated for her illness. After a long time with no news, every one assumes that Yoon Hee passed away and Seo In Ha tries to make a family for himself but when he finds her in Korea again he's determined not to let her go again. Although not as sweet when they're middle-aged, their love is so pure that you just have to wish for their happiness but with In Ha's ex-wife involved, no-one's going to be allowed happiness. A parallel story of love and pain occurs when Seo Joon and Jung Ha Na meet. Joon falls for Ha Na's cheerfulness and quickly wins her over with his undeniable charm however it's not that simple because Seo Joon is Seo In Ha's son and Jung Ha Na is Kim Yoon Hee's daughter. It's so tragic because no matter what happens you know it's going to end badly! No matter how much you wish for both couples happiness you know it's not possible so through out there's this feeling of dread that almost makes me not want to reach the end!

Although complicated, the various love lines do play out nicely and connect very well. Except one. Lee Dong Wook who in the beginning is furious about Seo In Ha's 'betrayal', doesn't seem all that interested in Yoon Hee at all when she comes back. I know a long time has passed, but for some one who was madly in love he seems to have forgotten really easy unlike Hye Joong who is so madly obsessed with In Ha that she's turned evil!
My biggest qualm would probably be about some of the particular characters. For a start there's young Kim Yoon Hee. Most the time she just sits and reads she barely talks at all. She's such a dull character and yet somehow all the boys fall in love with her? I hate to use this terminology when talking about a drama.... but she's such a Mary Sue!! She's just so expressionless half the time she just looks like she expects to be waited on hand and foot by all her adoring fans. It just makes me want to slap her. The other character who I really have problems with is Hye Joong. While at college she's such a sweet girl, always joking around but honest and subtly kind. She falls in love with In Ha and is hurt by Yoon Hee's 'betrayal' but flash forward 30 years or so and she's full of nothing but anger and malice. How did that happen? Hurt and upset I understand but instead she becomes some kind of evil-stepmother (without the stepmother part). She was actually my favourite character at the start so I'm really annoyed the writers decided to make her the 'villain' of the story.
The actors from the 1970's story move on to acting out the next generations story (i.e, Jang Geun Suk plays both young In Ha and Joon) but they've been styled so they still look like different people. I'm not going to bore you with a list of actors and how well they did, I'm just going to pick out one person in particular. Im Yoon Ah who plays Kim Yoon Hee and Jang Ha Na, also known as YoonA from Girl's Generation (SNSD). I had no idea that any members of SNSD done acting and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of her acting. Although Yoon Hee was pretty expressionless Ha Na is a much more animate character and goes through many emotions. So Kudos to YoonA for that!
Finally I just want to throw out some thoughts on the soundtrack. It features a lot of "C'es La Vie's" songs mostly the song that In Ha wrote with Yoon Hee - Love Rain - which is sung, played on guitar and played on violin during different scenes and it's a really nice melody so that's fine. The drama has a lot of nice melodies in fact. But it seems they got lazy halfway through composing and instead of making enough tracks to fill the episodes they just pinched some popular classical songs. And the soundtrack was sounding so nice too, they were just too lazy!
There are a lot of new and exciting concepts in this show making it unlike any other drama I've seen. Thinking a lot about family and their importance is a different aspect to look at. Mostly I think it's the tragedy in this show. All dramas I've watched have ended with a happily ever after, but in this story there is no ending that could satisfy me, but I'm still very intrigued as to how it'll turn out. And let's be honest, what good's a drama if it doesn't shatter your heart into a million tiny pieces?

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