This is a beautifully filmed movie, the cinematography is perfect, the settings are gorgeous, the music is touching and the actors play their parts well. I expected this movie to be well done when I started this, after watching the trailers and gaining high expectations, but this was beyond my imagination. From reading the synopsis I thought that this film would be about a travelling magician who joins the princesses’ bridal party and does magic for them on the journey and they fall in love blah blah blah. Instead, we have a famous magician named Hwan Hee who works as a performer in the red light district. He bumps into the princess one night when she gets lost in the forest. After coming to one of his shows disguised as a handmaiden the two start to secretly meet at night and fall in love. It’s a beautiful love story complete with gorgeous magic shows and tricks. I’m going to lie, but magicians are one of my favourite kinds of profession. If a guy would woo me with magic tricks like Hwan Hee did the princesses, I think my life would be complete. My favourite trick was probably the first trick he does for the princess with the fireflies. It’s touching and gorgeous, and made me extremely jealous, not something you’d want to miss. The cinematography is very well done. If that’s your kind of thing, then this is defiantly a movie which should go on your list. There is a lot of imagery and suggestion in a lot of the scenes, leaving things to the audience to presume, instead of strictly saying what happens. For example in the first couple of scenes we have someone approaches a lady with a weapon and then in the next scene a handmaiden is picking up a shoe floating in the river. I love who ever directed this movie because they did an excellent job. The actors are great and have captured the essence of their characters, in addition the costume and makeup were on peak. I put these two together as they are two of the aspects which identify a character. Unlike a lot of historical dramas I’ve seen, the poor magician who lives in a dirty part of a Qing Dynasty city - or Joseon Dynasty city I’m not sure which, I got confused – he doesn’t have perfectly clean hair. It’s greasy, messy and obviously hasn’t been washed in a while. Compare it to the dramas were a man who has been living in the slums for 18 years, looks like he just walked out of a Herbal Essences advert. That sounds like a really strange thing to pick up on, but it just adds that little bit of reality to such a made up story. I like how the antagonist doesn’t really come into play that much until the end, excluding his role in the unfortunate back-story of our handsome protagonist and his blind gisaeng friend. We’re never explicitly told what happened in a lot of his back-story, leaving it up to the audience to guess why, what and how. I think this is a good item in the directing and writing of this movie as it leaves things to the imagination of the audience whilst allowing more screen time for the relationship between the princesses and the magician to deepen. Man do I love this story. The two leads play their parts well; it is obvious that the princess is struggling with her identity and what she wants in life. The turmoil between being the princess who was sold by her family, the princess who will rule the country and the commoner that the magician thinks she is, can all been seen through the actors expressions and speech. The actor and the writers did an excellent job. With a small addition to this list, the blind gisaeng friend of the magicians is amazing! I would have thought she was actually blind. Very often with actors who a re acting blind, they will blink or react, but she doesn’t. Props to her cause I felt like she needed a shout out. There is no outstanding music which I can remember, or at least nothing which made me look up the OST on Youtube, however I think all of the music is instrumental. Which by no means is a bad thing. The music was absolutely beautiful, it made me happy. But that being said there isn’t much I can talk about with the music apart from the simple fact that it was very well written and performed. Would I recommend this movie? Yes. If you are a fan of magicians, adorable love stories or beautiful cinematography this is a good movie to watch. It gets rather violent in parts, as old magic didn’t have very many human rights or rules against murder, but on most other occasions it’s a beautiful movie. From what I can tell our protagonist magician doesn’t kill people, it’s the magic by the other magicians which is nasty. Thought I should probably warn you in advance. I hope you watch this and enjoy it as much as I did! Have fun ^^