Alone in Love/Era of Love/Yeonaeshidae

11. Alone in Love/Yeonaeshidae/ Era of Love

Cast:
Son Ye Jin - Yu Eun-Ho

She is a gym supervisor specializing in swimming training. An active sportswoman and the ex-wife of Dong-jin.

Gam Woo Sung - Lee Dong-Jin

He is a bookstore manager. Has the hobby of reading and is a somewhat pessimistic person.

Lee Hana - Yu Ji-Ho

She is the sister of Eun-ho. A junior (penultimate year) in university, she secretly wishes that her sister and ex-brother-in-law will reconcile.

Gong Hyeong-Jin - Gong Joon-Pyo

The best friend of Dong-jin. A gynaecologist by profession, but like Ji-ho, wishes that Dong-jin will return to Eun-ho.

Moon Jeong-Hee - Chung Yu-Gyoung

The first love of Dong-jin. They meet each other again at a school reunion party and Dong-jin decides to pursue her and eventually marries her after his divorce from Eun-ho.

Oh Yoon-Ah - Kim Mi-Youn

The childhood friend of Eun-ho.
Divorced from her husband and has a daughter, Eun-sol. Wishes to find a man who is responsible and kind to her daughter and sees Dong-jin as the perfect man.

Lee Jin-Wook - Min Hyun-Joong

On the verge of suicide until Eun-ho coincidentally managed to talk him out four years ago. Since then, he has remembered Eun-ho and seeks to date her when he finds out that she is now divorced.

Seo Tae-Hwa - Chung Yoon-Soo

A university professor who takes swimming lessons to overcome his fear of the water. Falls in love with Eun-ho.

Cho Hye-Young - Choi Young-In

Ex-wife of Yoon-soo. Fell in love with him when she was studying abroad but refuses to be legally divorced from him.

Jin Ji-Hee - Cho Eun-Sol

Daughter of Mi-Youn. Likes Dong-jin a lot and wishes that he will become her stepfather.

Ha Jae-Sook - Nah Yoo-Ri

A pro-wrestler. Friend of Eun-ho and another person who wishes for Dong-jin and Eun-ho to reconcile.

Kim Gab-Soo - Yu Gi-Young

Father of Eun-ho and Ji-ho. A pastor who does a talkshow on the radio at night for people with problems in their relationships.

Post Drama Thoughts & Synopsis:

Marriage.
An occasion that marks the union of two people in a lifetime.
We know what happens when the love in a marriage fizzles out, it leads to inevitable divorce and the process of healing starts for both parties who go their separate ways.

But what if the love is still there?
"Alone in Love", a drama starring Son Ye Jin and Gam Woo Sung and directed by Han Ji Seung seeks to address the issue of people who are legally divorced, and yet still feel for each other.

Inspired by the novel "Love Generation" by the late and acclaimed Japanese writer Nozawa Hisashi (who tragically committed suicide in early 2004), this 16-episode drama, with scriptwriter Park Yeon-seon (My Tutor Friend), tells the story of how marriage should not always be seen as the next step in a relationship and how love can continue without a legally binding contract. The drama offers a wholesome storyline and realistic character development.

Being a huge Korean drama buff, I have had my fair share of nonsensical Korean dramas where the plots are bombastic and the characters totally incomparable to any real world person. I have endured enough of contractual marriages and incest plots which seem to be repeated with slight variations here and there with the Korean dramas I have been watching. Whilst refreshing at first, it gets dull and boring once you see too many shows with roughly the same storyline.

And so when "Alone in Love" or rather "Love Generation", whose name was changed to the former to avoid confusion with the famous Japanese drama starring Takuya Kimura and Matsu Takako in 1999, promised to deliver a much-needed dose of realism into my Korean drama watching days, I was more than eager to give this drama a try despite the preceding reputation of such shows being slow and boring.

And now the golden question: Did it deliver?

I do not wish to reveal the entire storyline to those prospective watchers of the drama as you might be deprived of the privilege to enjoy the drama as it unfolds.

Let’s start off with the synopsis up to the first half of the drama (Credits to the Korean Herald, Shin Hae-In):

Eun-Ho (Son Ye Jin) and Dong-Jin (Gam Wu-seong) meet one day at the bookstore where he works at and they're immediately drawn to each other. They fall in love after subsequent meetings, and the two are married like millions of others who are in similar situations. But two years later they are divorced, and that's where the story opens. A pair of divorcees sitting across from each other talking about each other's lives.

There's nothing about them that stands out from the crowd. They have ordinary jobs, he works at a bookstore and she at the fitness club. Neither is extremely good-looking, nor rich, nor charismatic. But there is something different about them, and as the story reveals the reasons behind their divorce, their continuing meetings after divorce, their mingling in each other's lives, their matchmaking attempts for each other, and their internal monologues about each other, it becomes apparent they are each other's destiny, if such a thing exists.

But even so, getting back together might be asking too much, since that would open up a wound that they've tried to bury for 3 years. Furthermore their new love interests, Mi-Youn (Oh Yoon-Ah) and Hyeon-Joong (Lee Jin-Wook) are marking their steps into Dong-Jin and Eun-Ho's lives, and the new love might just be a wiser option for two that have tried but failed already. In fact, Hyeon-Joong may have more things in common with Eun-Ho than she ever had with Dong-Jin, and Mi-Youn seems to need Dong-Jin more than Eun-Ho ever did, this alone might be enough for the pair of divorcees to finally cut the tie between them.

After losing a much expected baby, the couple fails to heal the wound together, choosing instead to separate before "they see the worst of each other."

But even a year and a half after their divorce, the two meet up in their favorite bakery for breakfast, quarrel over trivial things like a married couple and eat dinner on their wedding anniversary with a free meal coupon provided by the hotel where they got married. While wondering whether the lingering feelings are love, Dong-jin and Eun-ho are both too afraid to start over - and more afraid to end the relationship completely. With neither brave enough to confront each other about the misunderstanding on the day Eun-ho had a stillborn baby, they are unable to move on. Although they had gone through marriage, they are no better in solving the problem than other lovers.

Having "failed" once, love turns into fear. Eun-ho constantly wonders to herself, "Where and when does love begin? Are they feelings of worry and longing love? If one loses sleep over the lingering face, is that love? If one's heart keeps on aching after a long time, was that love?"

Alone in Love was neither a light and sugary love story with pink balloons flying out of car trunks, nor a macroscopic analysis on the issue of love and marriage. Through dry monologues of the two main characters and realistic depictions of life, the drama placed the main characters in the vulnerable gap between the married and the unmarried. As the two main characters approached love and marriage from separate views, the drama turned into viewers' own stories, even for those who had never married, divorced or ached over love before.

Actor Gam and actress Son - currently the two most-wanted people in the local entertainment scene - also showed off the best of their acting skills already proven through several movies including King and the Clown and April Snow, respectively.

For Eun-ho, love becomes simply too painful. "Love hurts. At the beginning the hope hurts. After a while, the desire to know everything about him hurts, and when it ends, it hurts because love doesn't end at the same moment for the two people," she says to herself. "Nothing is sad or funny. I am neither angry nor happy. But when an unexpected sigh passes through my body, the small gap between the ribs aches with a penetrating chill."

Dong-jin, on the other hand, strives to move on. For him, unraveling Eun-ho's misunderstanding about the day when she had a stillborn child - which he spent next to the dead baby - is meaningless as it will only deepen their wounds.

After meeting someone new, Dong-jin tries to justify his new romance by saying to himself, "Since when did I stop talking about my future hope? Growing up means losing hope and realizing that tomorrow won't be different from today. This is why grown ups love. Romance is like a naive hope that makes them wait for a different tomorrow with a fluttering heart."

Watching Dong-jin and Eun-ho hesitate and vacillate, many viewers wondered with frustration why the two main characters couldn't be more frank about their feelings. None the less, perhaps the frustration had been pointed toward themselves.

The Review

Firstly, do not let the ratings fool you into not watching this drama.
The highest rating for "Alone in Love" was a mere 19.5% on its final screening but in truth, the numbers do not reflect the true significance of the drama.

"Alone in Love" was Gam Woo Sung's first drama project in four years and Son Ye Jin’s first in three years. If the majority of viewers remember, Son Ye Jin’s last drama was "Summer Scent" which was directed by PD Yoon, the man who brought about Hallyu with "Winter Sonata". Unfortunately, most fans would agree that Summer Scent was more of a miss than a hit with a flimsy storyline.

Ever since, Son has been involved with films like "A Moment to Remember (with Jung Woo Sung)", "April Snow (with Bae Yong Jun)" and "Art of Seduction (with Song Il Gook)" all of which were major successes in their box offices releases either domestically or in the Japanese and Chinese markets. As always, critics lashed out at the pairing of Son Ye Jin, who is in reality only 24, with a male lead that is almost a decade older than her.

But looking back, Ye Jin did her previous three movies with males leads that were all above 30: Jung Woo Sung – 31, Bae Yong Jun – 33, Song Il Gook – 36.

Like most viewers, I was looking forward to Ye Jin’s portrayal as a 28 year old divorcee and as I expected, she delivered a flawless performance as Yoo Eun-ho. I once wrote that So Ji Sup was perfect as Cha Moo-hyuk in "I’m Sorry I Love You/Misa", and I would use the same term to describe Ye Jin here: She’s perfect as Yoo Eun-ho.

As Yun-ho, she shows to us how a woman tends to hold back after the end of a relationship. I found the scene where a usually emotionally-stable Eun-ho finally breaks down in tears as she hugs Ji-ho and laments about how unfair life is to her after Dong-jin get remarried particularly tear-welling.

And I noted how some members of Soompi discussed how women and men approach the issue of the end of an relationship.

I quote:
Perhaps it is indeed harder for women to move on at the end of relationship because of the fact that they focus a lot on the emotions; Men, on the other hand, tend to be rational and are able to readily accept the end of something and move forward.

Dong-jin may live okay without Eun-ho, but Eun-ho will never be okay without Dong-jin, so it seemed as the drama implied. But as I recalled, there was this scene in the bar where Joon-pyo asked Dong-jin why he did not consider restarting the relationship with Eun-ho. Dong-jin merely replied that to start it again would be to hurt her again. Perhaps the producer’s intention in filming that scene was to show the viewers that men are not as hard as they are made out to be, and that they also cry and bleed in some dark corner of a room whenever they have their problems.

This is where Gam Woo Sung’s experience shows, as a relatively newer actor would take the easy route out by overacting certain scenes, but Dong-jin never exposes himself to be over-emotional till the very end of the drama when he thought Eun-ho’s life would be in danger.

His portrayal of a man in his older years is more realistic than reelistic. For a man of his age would know that some things in life are destined and that there is no point in more people being hurt over it.

Take the instance where his child was still-born, Dong-jin only meekly told Eun-ho that he was returning to the office when in actual fact he had spent the entire night cradling his dead child. He recognises the fact that telling Eun-ho the truth of his whereabouts would only bring more hurt as Eun-ho faces her dead child. Yet, like all human beings, he cannot help but feel a sense of anguish and loss when he sees his ex-wife being courted by a younger man.

With so much limelight on the two leads, we should not forget to pay attention to the other cast members. My opinion is that Gong Hyeong-Jin (who plays Gong Jong-pyo) and Lee Ha Na (Yoo Ji-ho) did a very commendable job in bringing their characters to life.

Like all predictable storylines, these two try all ways and means to pull their best friend and sister respectively together, but fall in love with each other at the same time. And while they marvel and chide their counterparts about how ridiculous that two people who are in love with each other cannot be frank enough to confess their love for each other, they themselves realise how difficult it is to be honest with their feelings to the ones they love. Their chemistry is as good as the main leads’ and they bring much-welcomed heartwarming scenes in a drama that many mistake to be a melodrama.

The truth is, "Alone in Love", is not an all-out melodrama. It has elements of humour that help to strengthen the draw of the drama without making the entire concept of love ridiculous and laughable. I believe that everyone who has watched this drama will find the finale the best episode of the entire series – an epilogue where we hear Eun-ho narrating her views on life and love itself. There is a line that particularly stood out for me where she mentioned that she felt her life could not be considered good yet as she had not led it all the way to the end, but happiness in life is a slow process which develops from day to day.

The most credit should probably go to the director of the drama: Han Ji Seung.

His idea to tell the story backwards at certain times helps to connect the dots in the storyline and his knack for using simple visual effects to hint matters subtly was great.

I enjoyed his constant comparisons of how the past was like for both Dong-jin and Eun-ho:

and how awkward that was with comparison to now:

I would kill myself if I told you folks exactly what happened at the end, but I came out from this one feeling warm at heart and better than I felt in a long time.

Did it deliver?
Yes, and much more.
"Alone in Love" deserves a 5.5 out of 5 stars. To me at least, it is THE must-watch drama of 2006.

Pictures credit of members of Soompi, YYCAF and SBS Kr