Spring Waltz

The bad thing about me isn’t even that I buy, or I buy a lot.  It’s that I buy a lot at once.  With my current drama drought (I have a list to watch, but for some reason I’m not feeling up to it), I suddenly want to rewatch my all favorites over again.  So I put a temporarily stop on my manga buying rampage and instead went on a drama shopping spree.

Spring Waltz was the first of my orders to arrive and oh how gorgeous it is!!  The picture does it no justice.  I was expecting one of those standard cardboard boxes with DVD cases inside like my other YA boxsets.  But hot damn, YA went special treatment on this one.  The cardboard outer box is made with really nice textured paper.  The title’s printed with metallic foil.  On the inside, the DVD cases are the fold-out kind, so you get extra photos printed on them.  The collector in me was squealing in delight when I first opened the package.

Okay, now that the shallow part of me is done obsessing over presentation, let’s talk about the actual content.  Spring Waltz is the last installment of the Four Seasons dramas.  In case you’re like “what the hell are these Four Seasons dramas,” click here for a 101 course.  Her post is funny even if we differ in opinions.  But if you’re a seasoned
(har har) drama watcher, there’s nothing new about Spring Waltz that you haven’t seen before.  There’s birth secrets, childhood sweethearts, shitty parents, clingy fiances, etc and etc.  So maybe I’ve scared half of you away, but if you’re a sucker for all things romantic like I am, please stay aboard.  There’s a script on the boxset that writes “What love is all about” and the sentence really nails the drama for me.  Even with a cliche premise, there’s something sweet and genuine about the main couple that makes their romance believable despite contrived plots elsewhere.

Theirs isn’t a Cinderella-Prince Charming story.  They’re more of a Romeo-Juliet pairing, which is actually rarer in Kdramas for some reason.  Yes, he comes from a more prestigious family and she from a less advantageous background.  But I think it had jack do to with their relationship.  What kept them apart was ironically his original
miserable past, not his new shiny present.  I also find it refreshing that although he comes from a well-to-do family, they don’t own half of Korea and his trade isn’t in the family business.

As for their chemistry, I am rating it adorably swoontastic.  This is Han Hyo Joo’s first leading role, and also my favorite of her performances.  Maybe it was her “greenness” but she has a very easy charm to her Suh Eunyoung.  She was sweet and natural, and as fresh as Spring.  Her interaction with Suh Doyoung was also accordingly natural.  They’re not your fun bickering pair, or your sexy passionate pair.  They’re the tender pair of pure unadulterated love, if such a thing exists.  They actually kiss, and hug, and show affection far more than your average kdrama couple and yet everything was still PG chaste.  That’s because everything they do has a sentimental implication rather than a physical one.  They just sorta radiate in each other’s presence and envelop themselves in a happy bubble away from everything else.  This type of innocent love story could’ve fallen flat if acted by more veteran actors because they might just roll their eyes and say “I did this 10 dramas ago” but I believe because these two were amateurs, they didn’t have the skills or experience to just call in a performance and therefore they embraced their roles with such sincerity.

I can’t quite recommend Spring Waltz to everyone because I know it’s not majorly popular even among melo fans.  But if you’re in the mood, watching it for the atmosphere alone is great.  Don’t try to think too hard.  Get in tune with your sentimentality while enjoying the wonderful cinematography.