This one's a beautiful, tender, quiet romantic drama with a moody atmosphere, set in a tight knit Welsh fishing community. It's a touching story about a man waking up sexually in the middle of his life, and how he, his family, and everyone around him deal with it, which makes it emotional and sentimental without ever getting over the top. The slow burn plays out against a landscape that's as bleak as it is gorgeous, where quiet, closed off men are stuck inside rigid ideas of what masculinity should be. Some people might be reminded of "God's Own Country," but I think both films are lovely in their own way. Jack is a middle aged guy who co-owns a mussel farm with his rough around the edges brother Dyfan, and the tension between the two of them is simmering under the surface right from the start. Dyfan's three sons all help out with the work, while Jack's sulky teenage son Tom keeps skipping out. Jack's been with his wife since they were both 16, and...
Rit's our lead, a final year architecture student who unexpectedly turns into a viral sensation on campus known as the Prophecy Master. He reads fortunes using rune stones at his best friend Pure's neighborhood bar. What started as just a drunken story he told for fun ends up going viral and actually boosting business at the bar, so he just rolls with it. That's when Itthi enters the picture, the guy Rit's been crushing on for ages, who also happens to be the good looking heir to a wealthy real estate family. Itthi shows up with his friends to get a reading, and pulls out an old childhood photo of himself with a friend, asking Rit if he recognizes the other kid in it. Rit lies and says yes, and even tells him their childhood connection means they're fated to end up together. Itthi actually buys into it completely, and that's how their relationship starts, with even Itthi's grandparents warmly welcoming Rit into the family. Things get complicated once the real kid from that old photo, Phitcha, shows up in person. Rit recognizes him instantly but has no idea what to do about it. Meanwhile Pure ends up hitting it off with this new guy, and the two of them become a couple. All the while, lying to Itthi is eating away at Rit, and he keeps wanting to come clean but can never find the right moment. When he finally does tell the truth, he's completely blindsided by what comes back at him. It turns out Itthi had feelings for him the whole time too, and actually knew all along that Rit wasn't the real childhood friend, he just went along with the lie because he couldn't figure out another way to confess how he felt. Rit's devastated, realizing all that guilt he carried was for a lie Itthi had already seen through from the start. Making it worse, his best friend Pure had known the truth the entire time too. Wrecked by it all, Rit ends things with Itthi, but eventually comes to see that they were both playing games to win each other over, so neither of them is really innocent here. Running alongside all this is Pure and Phitcha's own love story.
The whole show is built around lies and manipulation, wrapped up in this layer of fortune telling and feng shui. Honestly the plot itself is pretty thin, and mostly you're just waiting around for the truth to come out eventually. Sure, I was a little surprised to learn Itthi knew everything all along and played along anyway, but a story this simple really didn't need ten hours to get where it was going. Early on the show gives off this fun, breezy rom-com energy, full of charm, mix ups, and lighthearted moments, and it holds onto that for a while, but then the middle stretch just starts repeating itself without actually moving anywhere. Instead it turns into this increasingly overblown drama fueled by lies and manipulation that gets harder and harder to buy into as it goes. The setup itself was genuinely fun and had me thinking this might turn into something a little more original, but the further it went, the more everything got blown out of proportion. Like, you two clearly like each other, was there really no better way to handle this? The cast does a solid job and brings some real charm, and the production values are decent too, but there's only so much you can do when the actual story doesn't give you much to work with. Rit's out there messing with random strangers by playing fortune teller. Pure's basically running Rit ragged just to keep the whole business going. And Itthi keeps pulling the whole "I can explain" routine without ever actually explaining a single thing, which just drags the emotional tension out way longer than it needs to be. Phitcha's whole subplot about wanting to become a famous singer doesn't really add anything either, honestly that entire romance could've been cut out completely and the show would've been tighter just focusing on the two main leads. The ending wraps up happily like you'd expect, but overall the show just can't hold onto the charm and spark it promised at the start. (4/10)
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