La valigia

Based on a novel, this is a dark psychological drama/thriller exploring complex themes of relationships, marriage and love. It also centers on themes of past traumas, psychological manipulations and complexities of different relationships. It's a powerful well-acted storyline that unwraps slowly but ever so steadily.

Thankfully, It's not a typical "Kdrama" series that you can find plenty of on Netflix and other streaming platforms lately but you wouldn't find Gong Yoo on one of those anyways.

The acting is quite solid especially from the main characters portraying their past emotional traumas and the slow healing they both go through finding each other again (as this was not their first encounter) and possibly lasting love from something that started as an unwanted, bizarre and disturbing contract marriage. But most marriages are contracts is one of themes the show explores and what binds two people together.

I haven't read the novel and I am sure this is not completely true to the book as others before it haven't been but on its own merit, this is a beautifully and well crafted production including the music scores and absolutely worth the watch.

The storyline was interesting, kept me binge watching the whole series in 2 days.

However, the main actress had a pokerface throughout the whole series. I think, I only saw her making a facial expression 3 times, in the whole 8 episodes. I get she had to be stoic and serious but d*mn..... I feel like anyone could've played that role. I mean, you'd just have to stand there with no expression on your face.

The other actors were amazing though. The main actor did a wonderful job.

It's got a lot of twists and turns, and it keeps you on your toes, but the main actress lack of, well... acting, just threw me off.

"The Trunk," a Korean TV series featuring veteran actor Gong Yoo and actress Seo Hyun Jin, had me hooked right from its announcement. The electrifying chemistry between the leads was something I didn't expect. Although they both have quiet personalities, they understood each other remarkably well. Netflix did a fantastic job by releasing all eight episodes at once. The series had a gloomy vibe, but to my surprise, it was very comforting. The screenwriting was top-notch, and I binge-watched the entire series in one go. This is one of those standout series that Netflix releases every year. It felt like a perfect year-end K-drama. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you have a great day!

Suspense dramas are not my favorite but I watched this one because it was also tagged as being a romance drama. It didn't really hit the mark for either genre for me. I thought the editing was rather poor. The first episode does not provide a very good foundation for what is going on an it took the next couple episodes for me to really get the gist of things. Also, while the flashbacks usually indicated how far back in time they were going, the flash forwards were generally not tagged and you had to glean from the context that the scene was happening in the future.

I also found the ending to be very unsatisfying...both the ending of the romance thread as well as the suspense thread...for the latter, some of the earlier flash-forward scenes provides misleading information about the fate of the villain that was intended to point you in the wrong direction as to who ultimately deals with the villain. That is just lazy/sloppy writing.

But on the bright side, I thought the acting was great. Seo Hyeon-jin and Jung Yun-Ha completely sold the animosity toward one another that their characters felt. And Gong Yoo brought to life how broken and submissive Han Jeong-won started and then how he was slowly rebuilt with the help of No In-ja.

Overall, I am glad I watched it but was also very glad it was only 8 episodes.

Trunk is a story that doesn't have much to do with the highlighted, painted so misteriously trunk but it's basically a "manual" for couples to make their lives as miserable as possible. These people really love to torture themselves unnecessarily.

A couple can't use the most effective method called "communicating", instead resort to bizzare ways to test how much they still love each other by the service of a shady matchmaking company. And a matchmaking company that is surprised the couples they match may actually fall for one another and breach a contract? Who knew?

Throw in a psycho with not so clear relation to the protagonists but somehow knows everyone and dips his nose into everyone's business very conveniently.

Not sure about the story but 6 stars for hiring the still fresh in memory Squid Game recruiter Gong Yoo and some good acting by him given the nonsense he has to work with. The main beatch totally gets on people's nerves, she did well.

Seo Hyun Jin isn't ready to be a serious mean girl yet. Visuals are good, ending just meh. Again, happy ending could be us but let's wait until second chance encounter to be together because we haven't depressed ourselves enough.