What a view | Netflix show Lovestruck in the City: a mockumentary in which the women are tough and in control
- Not your average K-drama, the show looks at the dating scene in South Korea’s capital
- Strong women and self-doubting and soppy men quickly become a series motif
The debut series of romance mockumentary Lovestruck in the City (Netflix, two episodes weekly) weighs in with an absorbing helping of both as it follows the adventures in love – or lack thereof – boasted about, admitted to, invented or concealed by six young men and women (three of each) making their way in the big city.
Not that the city limits represent any geographical constraints, especially for on-again, off-again couple Jae-won (Ji Chang-wook) and Eun-oh (Kim Ji-won), who do their frolicking and shacking up at the seaside.
The trouble is, when real life rudely interrupts their dreamy fantasy and Seoul exercises its gravitational pull, Eun-oh disappears from Jae-won’s orbit by reverting to her true identity, leaving him flummoxed and angry. Neither knows that the other is one of the six subjects, meaning that when the penny drops they will eventually live happily ever after, or send in the hit squads.
The Eun-oh and Jae-won tangle establishes a series motif: that the women are pragmatic and the men often self-doubting and soppy.
The epitome of the tough, in-control woman is the unavoidably likeable school gym teacher, and surly serial dater, Sun-young (Han Ji-eun). Brutally direct, she leaves men in no doubt as to what she wants from them – then happily pulls the plug when she’s no longer interested. At the opposite end of the scale is grumpy, perennially disappointed novelist Geon (Ryu Kyung-soo), who has been out of the dating game for so long he’s “ready to put up with any type of woman”.
Meanwhile, Kyeong-jun and Rin-yi (Kim Min-seok and So Joo-yeon) turn out to be an item – another disclosure in the steady drip-feed of revelations, sordid or otherwise, that keeps us invested in the fates of the lovestruck (or merely manipulative) six.
The series’ device of having the subjects address the camera directly adds realism, honesty and inadvertent humour; taking a partner, on the other hand, seems to open the door to deceit and misdirection (except in the case of Sun-young). So is love really a many-splendoured thing? You be the judge.