When Life Gives You Tangerines review: A cinematic masterpiece of love, loss and hope, powered by IU and Park Bo-gum

A child, Ae-sun, is standing on jagged rocks, her eyes searching the blue sea for her mother. Her mother is one of the island’s hanyeo, a woman diver who harvests sea life from the ocean floor to feed her family.  Nearby, the village women mutter mutinously, calling the woman ‘greedy’. They’re all sunburnt, worn out, but have cobbled a life together for themselves and their family. It’s anything but easy, but it is what it is.

Meanwhile, her mother returns with abalone, guarding it from the other women. As she firmly asserts, this is for her daughter and family—she doesn’t risk her life every day for anyone else.

It’s just the first scene and it already has your attention, owing to its meticulously crafted layers, with attention to detail. Perhaps it’s the richness of the blue, or the brilliance of Yeom Hye-ran, who plays the mother of Ae-sun, our eventual protagonist, or the shy, awkwardness of Lee Cheon-mu’s young Gwang-sik, who keeps stealing fish for Ae-sun, or the distinct personalities of the village women, just sitting on the rocks of Jeju.

That’s the world of When Life Gives You Tangerines, where it is grimly said, “It’s better to be born a cow than a woman in Jeju.” The women are the true breadwinners, working the hardest yet receiving less than nothing in return—and the show quietly drives that point home. And what's even more raw and real is that they don't want to be praised for their resilience: They don't want to be constantly hit by life repeatedly; they deserve softness and love. The show doesn’t want sympathy for the women or pity: It just wants you to acknowledge them.

But where do you find it?

Nevertheless, as the title suggests, when life hands you the sourest tangerines, you can make the warmest and soothing tea.

And that, could just be the best thing you do.

Why settle for lemons and lemonade?

It's the women, who are the pulse of the story, driving it forward with angst, nuance, rage and love.  The Netflix series, stars a stellar IU, returning to the K-Drama scene after six years, matched by an equally fantastic Park Bo-gum.  The story, alternating between the past and the present, focuses on the feisty, rebellious and almost childish Ae-sun, whose world needs to be rebuilt after the death of her strong-willed mother.  

Yet, she is determined to fulfill her dreams of becoming a poet, and making it big in the world, all with Park Bo-gum’s devoted Gwang-sik by her side. In Gen Z terms, he is the greenest flag that there ever was-- he just lives to make Ae-sun happy, and if that includes swimming across the sea for her, so be it. He learns with her, and for her as well. Together, the two create a stormy chaos of love, as they flee for freedom to start a life of their own and find themselves as parents to a child, just eight months later. And later, two more children.

It wasn’t the spring of love that they had dreamed of, not as dramatic and incendiary as they hoped. Nevertheless, they learn to battle heartbreak, separation, and tragedy together, as the story swims between the past and the present, with poetic reflections peppering the narrative. The beauty of it all is that none of it seems contrived, phoned in; the words are so poetic that you almost wish that you knew Korean to attain the real grasp of the meaning, rather than rely on subtitles.

When Life Gives You Tangerines isn’t trying to slot itself into any genre. It’s not quite slice-of-life, neither is it melodramatic, or even focusing on the romance, as such. It’s just the tale of ordinary people, making the best of what they can from the tangerines that gives them---filled with heartache, joy, relief and the complete fallibility of dreams.

When Life Gives You Tangerines is streaming on Netflix.