[PREV - SECRET_GARDEN] [TOP]
WHAT_HAPPENED_IN_BALI
March 28, 2019
A style of dialog: someone is chattering on, pretending to
be friendly, trying to get a response out of someone--
but they keep refusing to answer, they just ignore anything
that's out-of-line and say nothing.
This is-- I won't say *realistic* exactly, but it might
be a reminder of a strategy that can actually be used in
real life-- "omerta" is always an option. And it does,
after all, take a kind of strength to avoid saying
things you don't want to, and reject overtures of
friendship, even if they are obviously phoney.
It's also a technique that can be used to keep the dialog
tight-- rather than waste words on evasions that won't
add much to the story-line, you can just skip it.
Relying on this pattern over-and-over, having *multiple*
different characters engaging in the same style of
non-communication... that starts to seem tedious:
yet another lazy formula.
And that, perhaps, is the central trouble
with "What Happened in Bali", a Korean
drama from 2004 starring Ha Ji-Won, some There are also a bunch of
years before big hits like "The Secret other people in it who can
Garden"... more-or-less act-- but the
moment Ha Ji-Won is on stage
there's a difference in level
that's immediately apparent.
She doesn't even have to do
very much-- or very much
that's obvious-- literally
her "stage presence" is
enough to impress.
(I don't know what to make of
Ha Ji-Won's more recent work,
though-- there's not much in
the way of conviction about
it. I'm afraid she might've
had some cosmetic surgery that
has interfered with her
expressiveness.)
I started watching this show
just out of curiosity to see One or two of the early episodes
how much location shooting really were shot on location in
they did in Bali. Bali... early on they relied so much
on interiors I thought they were
And I was also glad to try just going to fake the setting.
another Ha Ji-won series.
It turns out that the really interesting thing about
this show is how *grim* it is in tone-- it captures
something of the reality of being a "cinderella", I
think: the female lead has a desperate need for money
through no fault of her own, and she simply can not say
no to the obnoxious rich boy, no matter how much she
might like to.
This rich boy is to my eye, one of the most repellent
characters in Korean dramas-- he gets the female lead
to say yes to money-for-sex deals twice, and then drops
the demand for sex, to add insult on top of injury.
There are various other characters that are something of
a parade of male badness-- the female lead's boss is a
con-artist who raids her bank account and leaves town;
her brother runs up heavy debts with some gangsters and
then sells his sister to them to cover for it. And the
second male lead's mother has long since gotten used to
being physically abused by her boy friends.
Even the second male lead, who is supposed to be
Mr. Perfect-- he's this mopey-stone faced guy who never
says much of anything (and as I mentioned, that makes for
some scintillating dialog), and worse he doesn't really
*do* very much, he just puts up with whatever crap the
rich folks dump on him.
I'm going to continue through this one, but it's pretty
slow going. By the time you get to the two-thirds
point-- they keep doing that schtick where everyone is But then, if I
sitting around looking morose as the music swells, and must spend time
we see flashback montages of the good-old days when the staring at the
show was interesting. face of someone
Being Sad, I'd
prefer it to be
Ha Ji-Won...
And after the close.
Like: SPOILERS
Okay, this turns into an interminable slog around episode 13
(out of 20!)-- someone is *upset* so upset that they--
have to get drunk! And show up on someone's doorstep!
At the same time that someone else shows up! And they fight!
Over and over.
I got through it all at triple speed. (All praise "vlc".
All praise "Video Download Helper".)
In the closing three episodes, nothing anyone says makes
very much sense-- they're setting us up for the tragical
finish which involves the female lead suddenly realizing
that she really was in love with the rich brat, and can't
just settle down happily with emo boy.
I find this profoundly weird-- this show is notable for
something like it's grasp of reality, but at the end
it embraces the convention that no one ever switches.
Which ever one you start with is where you land--
They're really uncomfortable with the idea of serial
monogamy, they like "first loves are eternal".
At least-- when there's a gathering storm of rich fucks trying
to engineer our heroes' doom-- it turns out that our heroes
have the minimal brains necessary to evade the problems:
The female lead ducks the hired thugs, with the assistance of
emo-boy to slug it out with them; and emo-boy turns out not to be
a complete fool, and has been gathering evidence to take down the
evil older brother just as emo-boy bolts and returns to Bali.
(There is, however a godawful continuity glitch--
the female lead manages to leave the country
without her ID, which was abandoned with her
purse and later picked up by the rich brat.)
I was considering trying to track
down other things by this same
writer... I'm not so sure now.
written by Kim Ki-ho
directed by Choi Moon-suk
--------
[NEXT - DESCENDANTS_OF_THE_SUN]