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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Make a Woman Cry" Episode 14

In a bit of a fakeout, Deok-in doesn't confront her mother right away. Instead, she retreats to Jin-woo, admitting that there's some things she can't handle. And Jin-woo responds...by wristwatch. I can't tell whether that was supposed to be weirdly clunky product placement or whether director Kim Geun-hong just needed to include some kind of visual clue that Jin-woo the school teacher comes from a wealthy family. I'm inclined toward the former explanation personally.

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Anyway, how is the rich family doing? Well, they play some golf but other than that they don't do too much. Normally I'd consider this a good thing but this episode is so slow overall that there's not really that much of anything happening anywhere. I did like the way Hyo-jeong's threat predictably backfired. In the first place it finally clearly demonstrates that Kyeong-tae really is kind of a jerk. Kyeong-tae doesn't really have a nice side- he has a scheming side. And right now those schemes are at best impeded by the presence of his girlfriend. Although to Kyeong-tae's credit, he doesn't seem like the jealous type.

Back to Deok-in's storyline. Even though she puts up a brave face to Jin-woo at the start, the next encounter makes it all too clear that this is just not at all a good time for Deok-in to meet her birth mother. Deok-in is dealing with too many issues right now relative to her self-esteem, and being faced with a woman who looks older than her and is rather non-subtly a chronic alcoholic just makes Deok-in feel all the more worthless.

In the face of all that emotional despair it actually comes off as something of a relief when Kyeong-cheol shows up and starts thinking of new ways to act like a petty child. I'm not really sure this actually counts as much of a scandal at all. "Make a Woman Cry" has rather clearly implied that Deok-in opened up the snack shop as a way of coping with her son's death. Given that Kyeong-cheol coped by ditching his family altogether, how does anyone even know she's married?

Overall "Make a Woman Cry" is moving into more straightforward ethical territory- classic melodrama stuff, really. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I liked Kyeong-cheol and Jin-hee better when they were jerks who had somewhat sympathetic motives. Really, they managed to convince Deok-in to sign the divorce papers once. They could probably do it again if Kyeong-cheol would, say, express any kind of remorse about his mother's suicide attempt.

Review by William Schwartz

"Make a Woman Cry" is directed by Kim Geun-hong and Park Sang-hoon-III, written by Ha Cheong-ok and features Kim Jung-eun, Song Chang-eui, Lee Soon-jae, Ha Hee-ra, Oh Dae-gyu and Lee Tae-ran.

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