Netflix K-drama Nevertheless: Song Kang, Han So-hee in college romance drama that struggles to break the mould
- Song and Han seem comfortable together in the lead roles, but theirs is not among the most compelling romantic pairings seen on screens this year
- Despite regularly flashing his wide grin, Song’s charming shtick grows tiresome before long, while Han is a pensive protagonist
Song Kang (Sweet Home) returns to our screens for the fourth time in seven months in her first leading role, opposite Han So-hee (The World of the Married), in Nevertheless, a college-set youth romance from JTBC streaming globally on Netflix and based on a webtoon of the same name.
Han plays Yoo Na-bi, an art student specialising in sculpture who we meet for the first time when she’s all dressed up and walking through an evening’s picture-perfect flutter of snow on her way to an exhibition opening.
She arrives and discovers people gathered around a provocative piece, of a naked woman bent over, hair covering her face turned to the side, lips suggestively parted. The piece’s name is Na-bi, and its designer is her older artist boyfriend Yoo Hyun-woo (Choi Sung-jae). Hyun-woo is manipulative, possessive and, as Na-bi soon finds out first hand, a cheat.
Na-bi escapes this toxic relationship and we meet her again in the spring, as she cheerfully trots down a path lined with cherry blossom in paint-spattered overalls. She makes her way to her university department like the belle of the ball – called out to by her peers, an array of effortlessly cool and chattering art majors.
One evening she sits alone at a bar when a stranger comes up and caresses her shoulder as he turns to face her, but he’s mistaken her for someone else. She watches him walk away, and notices the butterfly tattoo on his neck – her name, Nabi, means butterfly in Korean.