We’re back with a new K-drama review, this time about ‘Just Between Lovers’, alternatively known as ‘Rain or Shine’. We featured this drama in our list of ‘K-dramas where we bawled our eyes out‘.
‘Just Between Lovers’ was written by Yoo Bo-Ra and directed by Kim Jin-Won. Yoo Bo-Ra you might know from ‘Snowy Road’ and ‘Reflection Of You’ and Kim Jin-Won from the dramas ‘The Innocent Man’ and ‘My Country The New Age’.
The Plot
This beautiful, emotional drama from 2017 really portrays the mess that is residual trauma. As children they were both deeply traumatised due to the collapse of the shopping mall they were in.
It manifested itself through different ways with Ha Moon-Soo (Won Jin-Ah) remembering flashes because of the tragic loss of her younger sister. Lee Gang-Doo (Lee Joon-Ho) remembers everything in clear detail and has continuous phantom pain in his leg from an injury he sustained during the event.
Ha Moon-So creates model buildings for an architecture company while also helping her mother out at their family bath house. Her mother Yoon-Ok is still struggling with the loss of her youngest daughter and often drinks herself into a stupor.
Lee Gang-Doo has been helping out on construction sites, doing jobs left and right. He even helps out with some seedy jobs.
They meet again and while Lee Gang-Doo recognizes Ha Moon-So almost immediately, she doesn’t. It’s interesting to see them navigate their pain and desires and ‘Just Between Lovers’ displays some really good writing.
Diversity
I really enjoyed the diversity in the characters. Kim Wan-Jin (Park Hee-Von) is a WebToon artist. She also happens to be a wheelchair user. We don’t see the wheelchair when we first get introduced to her character. She’s just introduced as the best friend of our main character.
There’s also the character of Sang-Man (Kim Gang-Hyun). He is mentally disabled but is treated with a lot of respect and love from the people around him. As it should be obviously.
Overall
There’s a lot more happening in the series. There’s the whole power triangle between characters Seo Joo-Won (Lee Ki-Woo), Jung Yoo-Jin (Kang Han-Na) and Jung Yoo-Taek (Tae In-Ho).
Because of all the multiple layers of storytelling, it keeps everything interesting. Having an entire series just dealing with complicated emotions, would make for a slow show. However because we have all of these different characters we don’t have that heavy feeling.
Go check out the trailer below.
