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skullsandwineglasses · 2 years

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Mysterious Love (2021) - Review

A cute and fluffy drama with some good bones and foundation, but could have had the potential to be a lot better.

Summary

It’s a melting pot of some outdated tropes: A possessive, alpha ML who exhibits some stalkerish behaviour. He’s depicted as being the ideal ML who’s loyal, strong, intelligent...basically all of the impossible standards that you’d hold fictional men up to. There’s a separation/reunion trope, a false memory loss/misremembering trope, a somewhat problematic Stockholm syndrome trope, there’s a bodyguard trope, and a ton of jealous love rivals.

Five years ago, the FL Ruan Nian Chu fell off a boat and into the ocean while trying to retrieve a fallen prop from the set of a commercial(?)/film shoot that she was working on. She ends up being rescued by the ML named “Lee” and is taken to a secret island village run by a mob cartel family. She was held captive there for an undisclosed amount of time, but the ML claims her as his own in order to protect her from those who want to r*pe and murder her.

Through flashbacks, we’re shown that they bonded and fell in love without admitting their feelings to each other. She tries to run away several times and is caught, but he saves her. He teaches her how to shoot a gun. She talks about her old life back at home, her family, her stage acting career, and all the food she misses. She tends to his wounds when he comes back to his cabin injured. In the end, we’re shown that they’re on a boat where a business deal is taking place, but something goes awry, and the boat explodes. Lee pushes her out with a life jacket so that she survives, while he stays back. She doesn’t know whether or not he survived.

Over the next 5 years, she’s haunted by the memories of Lee and she can’t move on. She’s a theatre actress, and she often carries her longing and grief for Lee into her performances.

One day, she spots him walking past the window of a cafe she’s in. A few days later, she sees him again at a press event for the actress that caused her to fall out of the boat 5 years ago that led her to be rescued by Lee. He’s working as the head of a security team for the actress’ event. Nian Chu calls out to him, but he claims that he doesn’t know who she is.

In theory, this should have been a pivotal moment. The premise is an interesting one. It’s like a fanfic come to life. FL falls in love with her captor, but it turns out that her captor is also trying to escape the island (because he’s on an undercover mission to get incriminatory dirt on the drug cartel family). They separate for 5 years and then meet again, but the ML doesn’t recognize her and goes by a different name, Li Teng.

This reunion should have been teeming with angst and longing and melodrama. It should have felt like a gut punch. Like a knife wringing your stomach. But the angst just kinda fell short. I’m not sure if it’s because of the ML’s acting, but I just couldn’t feel his conflicting emotions in that moment.

Nian Chu jumps into the pool to grab the fallen contract, and Li Teng has to resist from jumping after her. We see in a flashback later in the drama that shows how he was agitated and had to restrain himself and commands his best friend and teammate to go dive in after her.

Maybe I’m just used to watching a similar scenario in xianxias and historical dramas where the ML has to punish/ignore the FL in order to divert suspicion away from her, but xianxias and historical dramas portray this angsty scenario a lot more effectively.

I think the other reason why this angsty reunion wasn’t as angsty as it should have been was because there really wasn’t any reason why the ML had to act cold to her and pretend like he didn’t know her. I thought the actress was some powerful figure affiliated with the mob, but she was just a regular actress who hired his team to be security for her event.

It’s later revealed that the ML’s plan was to get close to the FL again, grab the coin with the data stored in it, and the dip out of her life so that she wouldn’t be involved and in danger. I could support this decision and why he wants to keep the FL at arm’s length, but then the next day, he signs himself up to go on a blind date with her? After ignoring and dismissing her at the event the night before? It just seems a little counterintuitive that he says he wants to keep her safe by keeping his distance, while also thinking that it’s okay to pursue her, date her, lead her on, and then leave her. It’s just such a strange sequencing of events and logical reasoning.

The next day on their date, the FL figures out that Li Teng is really Lee when she see the scar on his hip. So his cover’s blown. He slowly finds himself unable to resist his feelings for her. And he’s not sure what he wants to do. He knows he needs to leave her, but he can’t stay away and becomes increasingly more possessive. Nian Chu calls him out on it and says that they can’t be together until he figures out what he wants.

I just feel that this drama can’t seem to pick a lane and stay in it. Does it want to build up the angst and melodrama? Or does it want to be lighthearted and fluffy? They set up a lot of foundation for potential angst, but then don’t follow through with it, and so it becomes anticlimactic, and because they abandoned those angsty plot points, it makes you wonder why they set it up in the first place. There was no point in doing that.

Chemistry

There’s a lot of skinship in this drama, but despite all of those intimate scenes between the leads, the chemistry was still a little lacking. It’s still a really cute drama, and I broke into a wide grin several times while seeing them interact, but the leads are still missing that spark, that je ne sais quoi, that makes your stomach flutter.

The first weakness in their chemistry is the lack of buildup in the flashbacks. There aren’t a lot of bonding moments shown to us via the flashbacks. It’s very much an insta-love kind of situation, and you just have to accept that they fell for each other while in captivity and not question it. I can’t help but wonder what this drama would have been like if it were a HK production drama about an undercover agent. (A side comment about this is how vague the whole undercover/mob cartel/island crime organization is. We’re never really told exactly what the ML’s job is. Apparently in the book, he was a member of the Falcon Special Forces of the Chinese Air Force and in the drama he was simply handwaved as being part of the military and now leads a private security firm)

Secondly, there is also no buildup when they reunite 5 years later. They just immediately start dating without really getting to know each other first.

Thirdly, heaps of physical intimacy does not equal chemistry. There’s a lot of invasion of personal space on the ML’s part where he shoves his face into the FL’s face, but getting up close and personal doesn’t compensate for the poor relationship development and bad writing.

The ML is extremely jealous and possessive. The drama kept throwing obstacles that served no plot purpose except to rile the ML and get a reaction out of him. Case in point being the FL’s old classmate. You could have dropped his character from the drama and it wouldn’t have affected the plot. He was only there so that you can briefly see two men fight over her, even though they all quickly figured out that the classmate had ulterior motives.

Although, I think because the drama is going for a more lighthearted and fluffy tone, the ML’s stifling possessive is played off as being annoying and comedic, and the FL calls him out on how oppressive it can feel. This over possessiveness also happens after the FL is assaulted and so the ML feels that he needs to overcompensate, even though the FL was able to fend for herself using the self-defense skills he taught her.

Secondary characters

The final boss villain was interesting character. A boy who had to be casted out of his family and endure hardship in order to be ready to take over his father’s criminal empire. He’s taken under Lee’s wing and develops an obsessive crush over Nian Chu, who’s at least 5 years older than him (assuming that she was at least 18 when she was captured). He’s now 18 and wants revenge against Lee who abandoned all of them and used them, and also out of jealousy because of his obsession and lust for Nian Chu. But he ends up devolving into a one-dimensional villain because of this though. In fact, all the main antagonists in this drama are driven by jealousy and unrequited love.

The other antagonist being Wa Sha, who’s in love with Li Teng and whose main goal in the drama is to kill Nian Chu. It’s annoying, repetitive, and misogynistic that female villains are often motivated by their jealousy over the FL, specifically romantic jealousy.

The SML, Jiang Hao, was such a wholesome character. He’s done nothing wrong in the entire drama. It’s hard to believe that he’s actually 7 years older than the ML irl. He looks so young. The SFL was a little creepy though. The drama also didn’t want to take risks and wanted to preserve his “moral purity” by having Xing Xing be his adopted daughter and not his biological daughter.

Overall impression

A cute and fluffy drama to quickly binge (only 16 episodes) and to turn your mind off while watching. Some really cute moments, some secondhand embarrassment from the characters during some of the comedic scenes, but overall, it’s a watchable and enjoyable drama. Because it’s such a short drama, don’t expect certain plot points to be elaborated on. The main purpose of this drama is the two romance storylines, although I didn’t really care for the second one because of how grating the SFL was.

This drama is similar to dramas like My Glamorous Times and You Are My Hero, both of which also involve a military ML saving the FL, him falling for her, separating from her, and then meeting her again. Although I’d argue that the other two have better relationship development. But they both suffer from a draggy second half. Mysterious Love is more succinct, with a lot of cliched tropes stuffed into 16 episodes (specifically the possessive, protective, jealous ML trope). I do want to add that while the ML is possessive, he doesn’t come across sleazy. Maybe because the actor looks so young (and kind of reminds me of Bai Yu Fan - both are lanky and bony). I usually dislike the domineering CEO types, but Li Teng is more gentle, vulnerable, emotive, and playful. The FL also reminds me of Jing Tian.

Also a lot of skinship and darker themes in this if you’re into more mature cdramas.

#mysterious love #他在逆光中告白 #cdrama #romance #modern romance #review

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