Love in the Big City (2024)

Émotions en cascade

Alerte pépite !! Sortie hier cette série qui bouscule la Corée conservatrice est sans conteste une des meilleures série de l’année.

Nam Yoon Su incarne à la perfection ce jeune homme qui cherche l’amour mais lutte contre une montagne d’obstacles !
Il a tellement eu raison de faire ce drama malgré la vague de haine qu'il a reçue et j'espère qu'à la suite de la sortie de la série, il recevra la vague de reconnaissance qu'il mérite.

Cette série m’a touché par ce récit tantôt sensuel et doux tantôt triste et impitoyable !
Tout est bien fait : le ton est juste, charmant, parfois plus profond et dur mais jamais hors de propos.

La narration est presque en chapitre avec 4 réalisateurs différents et les images sont souvent très belles !

Tous les acteurs sont excellents et j'ai adoré le couple Nam Yoon Su et Jin Ho Eun. Je n'ai pas pu faire autrement que d'enchaîner les épisodes !

Love in the Big City est un excellent BL mais surtout une excellent série ! Elle fait partie de
ces histoires qui restent en mémoire et qui vous marquent pour longtemps.

Citeste mai mult

blended different tones very well - a must watch

Overall: there are very few series that manage to balance humor, romance, realism and sadness well, Love in the Big City is one of them. Based on the book Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park which I didn't read and I reviewed the series on its own merits. 8 episodes about 50 minutes each. Aired on Viki https://www.viki.com/tv/40771c-love-in-the-big-city

Content Warnings: (2 major ones, see my spoiler comment and how the romance plays out), harassment, unwanted outing, homophobia, non/dub con turned consensual, conversion torture (off screen), punch

What I Liked
- acting/chemistry
- supportive friends
- blended different tones very well
- sweet moments
- intimacy
- character growth
- production value

Room For Improvement
- exposition dump to introduce his friends
- series covered 10 years, so voice overs were used to show passage of time
- odd that a certain aspect wasn't discussed in episode 5
- episode 8 jumped back and forth between flashbacks and the present

Citeste mai mult

Love In The Big City: Unfiltered Look at Gay Love, Friendship & more.

This was, without a doubt, the most realistic kdrama i have seen in a long time. Its portrayal of gay relationships, friendships and the challenges faced by the queer community was spot on.

Go Young's life was a rollercoaster, constantly searching for true, lasting love. The show captures four different relationships in his life, two were more casual while the other two were serious. He even found his soulmate in one of them but its heartbreaking that they had to part ways. Life, however goes on and so does Go Young’s journey. I wish he had reunited with Gyu Ho in the end but at least we were treated to many great moments between them in the final episode.

Go Young, portrayed by Nam Yoon Su was truly a one of a kind character. His character's journey felt quite real. The show struck a perfect balance between light and heavy moments, just when things seemed overwhelming, it would quickly shift back to a lighter tone in the next episode. It created a beautifully complex emotional experience, delivering both heartwarming and heart wrenching moments.

What i liked most about Go Young was his resilience. Despite all the hardships he faced, he remained steadfast. He approached everything with optimism, even as he struggled with loneliness and an unfulfilled longing for genuine, lasting love. He found that love with Gyu Ho but unfortunately, it wasnt meant to last. Among all his relationships, the chemistry between Go Young and Gyu Ho was undeniable. They both lived their lives to the fullest, despite the ups and downs and always managed to sort out their differences and come back together, until Gyu Ho left for Shanghai.

Aside from his relationship with Gyu Ho, i absolutely loved Go Young's friendship with Mi Ae and his close knit group of gay besties. I was disappointed that Mi Ae disappeared after the first two episodes, she could have remained in contact even after her marriage. It was odd not to see her even when Go Young’s mother passed away. Despite that, their friendship was so deep, like soulmates that i wished she had stayed in his life during both good and bad times. As for his three gay best friends, they were the best characters in the whole show. They stood by him through everything and one of my favorite scenes was when they created ruckus at the hospital while Go Young was recovering also when Go Young and his gay friends were dancing to a girl group kpop song at the center of the club, it reminded me of a news story i saw on twitter about two gay men in seoul fighting over (G)I-DLE’s Soyeon’s part in Super Lady. They portrayed gay life in seoul very realistically, lol.

The show also addressed sensitive topics like HIV, internalized homophobia and family rejection, all while keeping its lighthearted tone intact.

Although the show did a fantastic job portraying the story realistically and covering all the volumes of the novel, the limited episode count made the pacing feel rushed, especially in the beginning. Thats my only criticism of the drama.

Overall, Love in the Big City stands as one of the best queer dramas i have ever watched offering an authentic look at gay relationships and the challenges that come with them.

Citeste mai mult

Chasing the thrill, hoping for love, self-sabotaging

Two episodes in I wasn’t sure if I could share everyone’s excitement about this series. I’ve seen people talking about it as this great breakthrough, a masterpiece, a game changer, and while I acknowledged how having a mainstream actor play a gay character and having actual national funding for a BL show was changing the landscape for kdramas. However, from a perspective of just a regular viewer, who ultimately expects to experience a good piece of televised fiction, I wasn’t really convinced.

Sure, the drama was well-produced, the acting was solid, I couldn’t really complain much about the story progression, as it felt pretty unforced. And yet, I couldn’t really resonate emotionally with the characters. Being it Go Young or his female friend Choi Mi Ae. I attributed it to the style of the story and the manner it was told. Time jumps, skipping important moments when people develop connections, not witnessing how they get closer or grow apart – it all made it difficult for me to develop an emotional connection with the characters as well.

It all changed around episode 3 or 4, e.i. during No Yeong Su and Go Young’s dating era. Their final encounter, during which Go Young ends up punching his (then already an ex) boyfriend was the turning point for me, the moment when I actually felt something (before I did tear up a bit when Go Young and Mi Ae reconnected, but this scene in the restaurant hit me waaay stronger). The look on Yeong Su’s face expressing both self-disdain and resignation really got me. Since then, I’d become more and more invested within every episode, getting used to the report-like narration and time jumps that stopped hindering my ability to immerse myself within a story and became just another tool to highlight its realism. From that moment onward, I did feel like I was given glimpses into different stages of Go Young’s life.

I loved the development of Go Young’s relationship with his mom and her gradual, quiet acceptance of his sexual orientation towards the end of her life. I started understanding Go Young more, noticing how he craves for love, but self-sabotages himself at the same time. That was a big theme for me in this drama, that’s how I saw it. Go Young is chasing love, but at the same time is not allowing it to happen. Affected by having to live with “Kyle”, being cheated on by a boyfriend who gave it to him, and a traumatising childhood experience of his father leading a double life all rendered him wanting love, but not really believing he deserves it.

Nam Gyu is too boring and clingy, so Go Young discards him in a pretty brutal, emotionless way. Then he gets himself entangled in a toxic relation with Yeong Su – a guy who pretty quickly starts to look like a red flag. Go Young clings to him almost in a similar manner like Nam Gyu clung to him before. Why? Partially probably because he was clearly very physically attracted to the guy and Yeong Su had a way to make a person feel like crap, just to throw them a bone from time to time, in order to keep them invested. But my take on it is that, because Yeong Su was never truly attainable, Go Young would end up trying harder. If Yeong Su actually got invested in their relationship 100% and dealt with his internalized homophobia, I’d wager Go Young would probably want out.

Finally, he meets Gyu Ho – probably the strongest candidate for a life-long partner. And yet he lets him go, despite two of them somehow managing to stay together, dealing with the challenges of every day life, its mundane aspects and gradual boredom that sets in their relationship. The relationship with Gyu Ho, while exposing Go Young’s somewhat immature idea of what love should be (a constant source of excitement), was still – in the end – the most mature one. Go Young and Gyu Ho try to resolve their issues, they attempt the rekindle the spark by going to Bangkok, and both work hard on studying Chinese in hope of moving to Shanghai together. And yet, in the end, Go Young sends Gyu Ho off alone, with a “blessing” to date other people. Once again sabotaging his chance for true love.

He doesn’t realize his mistake only until much later. But if they had a chance to have another go at their relationship, I’m not sure if he'd approach it differently. What happens after Gyo Ho’s departure, the ending to a "Habibi arch", the symbolic moving to a new place (as opposed to living in Mi Ae’s old apartment – which was highlighted in Go Young’s dream in one of the earlier episodes as mirroring him being stuck in life, with no clear direction) gives some hope, I suppose?

What originally started as a story of Seoul party goers who don’t always make the most responsible life decisions, eventually turned into quite a deep portrayal of a scarred individual, who tries to navigate his life amidst all the challenges it throws at him. I ended up really enjoying the experience and can understand why this show got so much hype.

There is so much more to say about this drama and more layers to uncover, whether it's Mi Ae's 180 turn in her life attitude not long after getting an abortion, Yeong Su's extreme way of dealing with his sexuality, or Go Young's self-destructive behaviour after receiving gifts from his father. It definitely is one of these shows that leave an audience with a lot of "food for brain". To me, personally, next to The On1y One, it's the best BL drama I've watched (I'm aware not everyone considers it a BL) and also one of the best kdramas.

Citeste mai mult

KO

Crochet du droit, crochet du gauche, uppecut et même direct à plusieurs reprises! Et KO à la fin!!!
Il faut être bien accroché pour regarder cette série queer qui nous montre certaines réalités sur l'Amour et l'Amitié. Bien sûr que c'est violent car elle nous parle de l'homophobie familiale et sociétale. Elle nous parle des difficultés à être soi en tant que gay dans une société patriarcale et réactionnaire comme la Corée (Ce n'est pas toujours mieux dans nos sociétés occidendales!)
De la production aux acteurs en passant par la photographie ou le montage, tout a été fait pour nous prposer une série vraie, de belle facture et sensible. Elle n'a pas eu droit au chapitre en Corée, et c'est une honte.
Comme quoi lorsque l'on a quelque chose à dire et que l'on s'en donne les moyens artistiques, on peut faire un sans faute. Bien sûr qu'elle est triste, mais elle offre aussi une porte vers l'espoir.
Je suis sûr que c'est la meilleure série coréenne de l'année. (Le dernier drama coréen qui parle de faits de société qui était à la hauteur de son propos, c'était "My Mister" avec le regretté Lee Sun Gyun.)
Si vous aimez passionnément l'Amour, il faut l'avoir vue. Vous aurez la boule au ventre maintes fois et vous en sortirez ému, mais vous aurez une facette, un petit aperçu des vissicitudes d'être gay dans ce monde.

Citeste mai mult

A raw and realistic depiction of a gay man's search for eternal love and himself

This is quite an emotional roller coaster of a story. I never read the novel and didn’t know much about the drama. I thought this might be your typical romantic-comedy but actually, this is a very realistic portrayal of a gay man searching for eternal love, and growing up along the way.

From the first episode, you know this is not your typical BL. The portrayal of the friendship, late night clubbing and hunting, and the drunken hookups are raw and real. “Love in the Big City” doesn't shy away from the harsh reality of finding love, and the difficulty compounds when you are a gay man in a conservative society.

Ko Yeong’s growth is shown through his different romantic relationships with a few men. You can see him grow from a fun-loving young man not believing in love, to realizing he might have lost the love of his life. Each relationship is unique and all have a very interesting start. This drama reminds me of the American TV show “Queer as Folk”. It might not be as daring, but daring enough to cause controversies in Korea.

When Ko Yeong met Nam Gyu, he was young and not ready to be loved. Nam Guy’s unconditional and persistent display of love did not end on a good note. When Ko Yeong was ready and met Yeong Su, it was the other party that’s not ready. It’s unfortunate because they had such a sexy vibe going on between them. Gyu Ho is the match made in heaven. They are both so adorable together and just click. At that time, they are both fighting real life’s challenges and unable to balance romance with career’s demands and reality’s tests of their love. By the time Ko Yeong realized what he had lost, it was a little too late. His meeting of Habibi is interesting and also somewhat of a half-baked story. I was having a hard time understanding Ko Yeong’s last message to Habibi. I thought it was just a fling without much deep feelings, but his message sounded more serious than I thought.

A highlight of the show is the friendship between Ko Yeong and Mi Ae. When you are an outcast, it’s really a blessing to have a friend like that through the highs and lows of your life. But as they grow older, such a friendship has to evolve as they get on with their lives. I had wished to see more of Mi Ae towards the second half of the drama, and not just that somewhat useless drinking scene with her sister-in-law.

I gotta give props to Nam Yoon Su for going all out in this drama. He really didn’t care for the criticisms directed at him. Not only was his acting great, he did not shy away from all the kisses and sexy scenes. In fact, I think he was a little too earnest like he’s going to someone’s face each time. I would have liked him to pull back a little on a couple kisses to show a more romantic side.

As I mentioned, the whole drama is about Ko Yeong’s growth through his relationships. Personally, I am not a big fan of this style of writing. At one point, I find it becomes repetitive when all we see is him going from one relationship to another. However, I am emotionally invested. I cry with Ko Yeong as he gets hurt and suffers through life. Throughout the drama, I was rooting for him to live happily ever-after, either with Gyu Ho or someone else.

I do recommend “Love in the Big City” but don’t go into thinking this is another fluffy BL. The strength of this drama is its realism and how Ko Yeong lives with the scars of each relationship and grows from them, and finds himself.



p.s. the drama synopsis doesn't seem to be 100% correct.


Completed: 10/21/2024 - Review #501

Citeste mai mult