Our Blues

Jeju Island, 200 km South of Korea is given "Provencal Style" treatment with its happy band of sunny, close-knit maritime folk with a sequence of 20 captivating, inter-related stories. It must be said there seems to be a preponderance of women on this island, with the men folk seemingly dead or incapable of providing very good role models - perhaps many having migrated to Busan or Seoul? The complicated, often vexatious male character, Lee Dong-Sook, however, literally saved this Kdrama from the fire. There's just something different about him; he is middle-aged, yet still a-n-g-r-y, in an excellently characterized performance by Lee Byung Hun. The rest of the cast, with the exception of the two old Ladies (who were excellent) projected slightly cardboard profiles, with a over-preponderance of clichéd, sentimental tales that slightly marred an otherwise well constructed central story around Lee Dong-Suk and his tempestuous relationship with his ailing mother.