Autumn Shower (2005)

Autumn Shower is more than just a love story. It is a story about love and loyalty; its profound meaning despite its uncertainty; the search for its validity in pain and tragedy and most of all its fleeting quality.

I was drawn to this drama because somehow it is like watching a long movie with a nice going “poetry feel” to it. There are no villains and scheming plots, just passionate characters put into situations wherein they have had to make difficult choices and therefore go through one consequence after another.

It was hard not to empathize with each of the main characters because they were very well molded and also played well by the actors/actresses. I find that their actions and reactions to the circumstances are well justified by their characters. Although some have gone to the extremes, I still think they are within reason as they were moved by overwhelming emotions.

Jeong Ryewon is such a great actress here, the cute scenes were cute and the emotionally pulling scenes were solid. Oh Jiho’s crying parts though not yet his best in this drama weren't as bad as to ruin one's viewing pleasure.. (perhaps his good looks is enough compensation =))

I hope more viewers take time to watch this drama. I’m writing this review after a second re-watch. If you are up to some seriously thought provoking moments on love, this drama is sure worth your time immersing in.

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A thoughtful and emotionally stirring meditation on what it means to love someone. This dug deep comparing and contrasting love as an uncontrollable feeling vs love as a series of deliberate choices and actions. The characters are all good people trying so hard to do the right thing, tying themselves into knots trying to honor their expectations of and obligations to each other in extremely trying circumstances. It really succeeded at making me feel for the characters and I longed for them to be able to come out of the other side of all the angst and pain with some measure of happiness or at least peace. The pacing is slow as molasses, I think it would have been better if we had seen more of the lead couple's courtship before the accident and resulting coma, but it was still a worthwhile watch for how well it wrestled with its central moral dilemma and for how strong Jung Ryeo Won and Kim So Yeon's performances were.

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Well, that was something. For some reason I didn't want the train wreck to end but at the same time I'm glad it didn't become nasty. I like all the three leads individually as actors/actresses but they didn't fit quite well together in this drama. I liked the drama for all the wrong reasons.

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O Amor no Limite da Traição

Autumn Shower, transmitido pela MBS, é um dorama que explora os complexos dilemas morais que surgem em um triângulo amoroso. A trama segue dois amigos que se apaixonam pela mesma mulher, mas a situação se torna ainda mais complicada quando a esposa de um deles sofre um acidente e entra em coma. O outro amigo, que já nutria sentimentos por ela, começa a se aproximar, gerando conflitos internos e externos.

O ponto forte de Autumn Shower é a maneira como ele lida com temas de culpa, lealdade e traição. O ritmo lento e contemplativo permite que o público mergulhe nos dilemas emocionais dos personagens, que lutam entre suas emoções e suas responsabilidades morais. O dorama é visualmente belo, com cenas melancólicas que complementam o tom sério e emocional da história.

Ideal para quem gosta de histórias sobre relações humanas complexas, Autumn Shower oferece uma exploração profunda de sentimentos conflitantes e as consequências de escolhas difíceis no amor.

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Was it ever settled, Was it ever over, And is it still raining, Back in November

The two best friends, the aspiring architect Yeon Seo and the scientist researcher Gyoo Eun (respectively Jung Ryeo Won and Kim So Yeon, both very excellent and gorgeous), by a strange twist of fate, and, ignoring randomness, they find themselves meeting and dating, at the same time, the architect Yoon Jae (Oh Ji Ho, excellent) who, like in an Eric Rohmer movie, with playful complacency, unwittingly flirts with both of them, but ends up choosing the more passionate Gyoo Eun;
Yeon Seo, despite her disappointment at the coincidence and relative ‘sentimental defeat’, accepts their union, in the name of the very strong friendship that binds her to Gyoo Eun, but a very tragic accident, during the honeymoon, will disrupt the lives of the three protagonists forever, bringing about dramatic and lacerating changes...

“TRY TO REMEMBER WHEN LIFE WAS SO TENDER WHEN DREAMS WERE KEPT BESIDE YOUR PILLOW.
TRY TO REMEMBER WHEN LIFE WAS SO TENDER WHEN LOVE WAS AN EMBER ABOUT TO BILLOW.”

As a product of a unique and, perhaps, unrepeatable season, ‘Autumn Shower’ is a beautiful and heartbreaking melodrama, marked by an underlying realism and a profound understanding of human frailty, capable of avoiding any easy moralism, circumventing the dangerous meshes of simple manichaeism, thanks to a remarkable script and an exemplary staging, capable of preserving such an equidistance that each (beautiful) main character in the story is confronted with his own weaknesses and his own reasons, in accordance with a deep understanding of human dynamics and, above all, of his own mistakes...

Ideally structured in two distinct segments (there is, of necessity, a ‘before’ and an ‘after’), with a first part of uncommon intensity, at times unbearable for the level of suffering represented -physical, of course, but also psychological - we are shown how a dramatic event - the incident and the coma - destroys the life not only of the victim, but also of the people most directly connected to her, with Yoon Jae, her husband anguished by guilt (he is directly responsible for everything that led to the incident), blamed by a livid Yeon Seo, but in fact ‘dumped’ even by his own family, who, in a moment of chilling selfishness, even proposes that he ‘abandon’ his wife (the marriage has not yet been officially registered) and immediately find for himself a new partner!

Love, duty, loneliness and repeated difficulties, even at work (total dedication to his wife, to the detriment of his own profession), on the shoulders of an all in all ordinary man, forced to face what is in any case considered a huge mistake and where the unpredictability of life can trigger a chain reaction, for which the moral condemnation is very little compared to the suffering already endured...

What may originally appear to be the ultimate act of unconditional love towards his bedridden wife, i.e. the subsequent registration of the marriage (‘Gyoo Eun, we are now officially husband and wife’), as well as the realisation of the dream house, will, on the contrary, represent a sort of ironic contrappasso in the development of the story...

And it is precisely in this desperate context, in this juggling of love, melancholy, discomfort and duty, between the despair of a possible extreme gesture and the promise made to his wife (‘I will wait for you, I will always be there for you’), that Yeon Seo slowly slips further and further into his life;

A tormented character on the verge of self-flagellation, Yeon Seo is initially torn by despair at her beloved friend's plight, but then by the inevitable torment at the betrayal perpetrated against her; the Australian interlude, an impossible ‘escape’ from feelings, even from those towards Soo Hyung, the doctor friend who has always been hopelessly in love with her, is only a postponement of the inevitable, all the more so because the deception is manifold, for in addition to the liaison, there is also betrayal of Soo Hyung himself, disillusioned by a naive and impossible acceptance of his love, and the consequent betrayal of the friendship between the two men, the doctor and the architect, who had for those two years formed a fraternal friendship.

“WE'RE TWO PEOPLE CAUGHT UP IN THE FLAME THAT HAS TO DIE OUT SOON”

At the moment when passion can no longer be repressed, where the selfishness derived from the awareness of feelings and the attainment of happiness predates, the clandestine couple flees from the world and their responsibilities (‘If we cannot go back in time, we must only follow our hearts’).
Escape as a necessity of life, as an impossible dream of a new existence, of a possible ‘familiar’ alternative in a fishermen's village, almost a ‘two hearts and a cabin’, as in the Italian expression, perfectly representative of the metaphorical separation from the outside world, sublimated by the renunciation of their telephones, and by their sincere and mutual confession recorded on an audiotape.

It is in this whirlwind of emotions that, ironically enough, the ‘miracle’ happens; the awakening from the coma is also an awakening of the senses in the two fugitives, who see their dreams of happiness shattered in the face of their new awareness; is a relocation of the story's pawns in the chessboard of life, the healing spell ‘condemns’ the players to their responsibilities, the husband must fulfil his duties and the lover flees again, going so far as to exclude herself from the general newfound happiness, avoiding the best friend who, unaware of everything, repeatedly seeks her out...

It is the moment when deception and guilt become unbearable, igniting the flame of suspicion in Gyoo Eun, initially unable to comprehend what everyone -except her- already knows, and which will be confirmed in the most direct and cruel way...

Yoon Jae is slowly squeezed between the two extremes, which plunge him into a vortex with no way out; he has no freedom to manoeuvre, only the fear of causing pain to one of the two women (wife or lover), the male protagonist, unintentionally cruel, forced by cowardice and insecurities to hurt the people he loves.

The female counterpart is split into two opposing and complementary characters (is she, on the whole, the image of the ideal woman!?), the lover, fragile and lonely, the wife who is determined to save her marriage, even at the sacrifice of friendship...

Adding salt to the wound is the unexpected pregnancy that carries much of the narrative scaffolding along the second half of the drama, decidedly unconventional in the way it relegates the male character to the background, leaving room for Yeon Seo's existential subjectivity, and the drama of the abortion, evidently sparked off by the stress arising from the confrontation-clash with Gyoo Eun, who is also, at this point, marked by feelings of guilt towards her (ex!?) friend who, once again, condemns herself to a wandering, a voluntary exile reminiscent of the existential path of a heroine from an old-fashioned melodrama...

“I'M LOSING MORE THAN I'LL EVER HAVE”

Does time heal all the wounds!?
After all this tourbillon of emotions, the question arises, because ‘Autumn Shower’, at least for my personal taste, is an all-encompassing experience, a sort of umpteenth interior road movie that leaves more doubts than certainties; a delicate study of feelings, a metaphor of maturation and - once again! - end of youthful dreams, well exemplified by Yeon Seo's touching letter;

Probably nothing seems destined to last, but the memory of past happiness is still alive in her heart and she will not accept to let it go. Who knows, with the course of time, maybe...

‘I loved them both, I am sorry because I loved them. And I am sorry because I could not be there for them.’

Magnified in its beauty by an absolutely brilliant cast, perfectly assembled in all the roles, with the two prima donnas playing a giant role in a splendid competition of bravura, with an excellent soundtrack that is so ‘out of time’ it manages to describe a world that perhaps no longer even exists, with those showers of rain that accompany the most touching moments of the story, 'Autumn Shower' seems to reflect, perfectly, that idea of the caducity of life, a sense of poignant melancholy (it is impossible to think of the story in another season!), the ideal passage from the season of joyful and unbridled vitality to that of calm and reflection...

Yet another significant piece that legitimises the multifaceted greatness of the Dramaverse.
8½ / 10

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