A melodramatic thriller centred on 2 leads and the collision of the utter snakepits each of their lives have become individually. Psychologically claustrophobic plot. Gong Yoo (as Han Jeong Won) and Seo Hyun Jin (as Noh In Ji) work brilliantly together as 2 anti-heroes who yearn for happiness but are trapped not just by manipulative and abusive friends and family, but by their own numbed and stilled psyches. Gong Yoo, suffocated and angry, as always emotes with every careful move of his body and gaze. Seo Hyun Jin's character uses her beautiful closed face to survive so the actress clearly indicates her thought processes by her timing and her movements. When Inji loses control and starts in on the usual FL idiocy (taking all the blame on herself etc.) it doesn't last long.

The main set, the home of Jeong Won's dead parents is one of those architectural excesses symbolically perfect for the hermit-crab existence of JW in the grandiose ruins of his horrible family history. The central element is a modern chandelier of grotesque Versailles proportions hanging over a two story central space off which open all the living areas. In Ji is inserted into this cave-like structure by a semi-sinister version of a matchmaking bureau which specializes in discreet temporary contract-marriages for transactional reasons. JW's ex, a malevolent architect herself, also fits into this set as an absent presence, since she herself actually engineered the whole premise of the show, the dual contract-marriages. The strengths of the performances of Jung Yun Ha (as Lee Seo Yeon) and Cho I Geon (as her own temporary husband, Yun Ji Oh) are central to the plot and to the success of the show overall.

This is a good watch for fans of kdrama for whom plot doesn't matter as much as camerawork, soundtrack and the play of formulaic expectations. A great watch for Gong Yoo fans who always knew he would be smoking hot in bed. But it is a show which bends the rules for the OTP so far that it will be up to you to decide whether or not you have been emotionally deceived and how cynically this was done.

At 8 episodes of 1hr ea. we are looking at one of the new lengths for a kdrama. At this point writers and directors have to decide which standard elements to keep, how much time to allot to them etc. In my timid opinion (timid bec the extremely distinguished director, Kim Kyu Tae is obviously fully intentional in his choices) this type of story needed a 10 ep. structure in order to more firmly establish a key anchor for kdrama, the relationships of family and friends over time as context. At 8 eps, the show was way intense, and the standard time-jump later on in the show felt more jarring than usual. I didnt feel ready for it.

My advice for getting around this is not to binge the whole show at once and go to sleep unhappy, as I did. I woke up the next day with a completely different perspective and decided I loved the Trunk. The next day I disliked it, and the next day etc.
I needed time to appreciate it, and in a classic 16 ep form that appreciation would have been done in tandem with the usual chorus of observers (families, friends and village idiots) within the drama itself. Although those characters were in the story, afterwards I literally felt they needed their own small corners (time, musical themes etc) to thrive in. Without them, the development of discussion and perspective has to be internal to the spectator, as in a movie....

Addendum 31/12/24
The symbolic frame of the Trunk was obscure to me on the first watch but one interpretation bobbed up (!) from the subconscious today, just as the two trunks did in the show’s really distracting anticlimax.

Two trunks, large enough to contain lives, pertain primarily to previous events in the lives of the ex-wife and the hired live-in wife. One loses a child and the other is abandoned at the altar. The trunks are submerged amidst confusing events.

The dramatic action of the Trunk moves from the light of reason in the public lives of the two protagonists down into a dark psychological space for most of the show, only to emerge again as public at the very end. The trunks follow this trajectory.

The twinning of the trunks makes little sense because parallels between the pairs of lovers thus are not used as the main structure, instead the ML (as the antagonist in the wife’s story) is unsuccessfully stood up alongside the FL’s stalker (one of those weird stand-ins for emotional craziness), and the hired live-in husband of the ex-wife is thus unjustly sidelined. It is not a pleasant surprise when he is dragged out at the very end to stand up alongside her. He wasn’t given a proper role in the showscript.

The fundamental traumatic events in the women’s lives are not clearly acknowledged by their men, although we are to infer this, I think; JW understands that IJ is from a background of privilege similar to his own and that she is stuck in a posture of abandonment and Ji Oh intuitively, I think, understands that Seo Yeon is acting out an extreme need for control of her life because she is still grieving her loss.

The overt issues between the psychologically imprisoned pair are somewhat resolved first, before the trunks actually show up again. The development of trust and respect between them helps the opening up of the root conflicts of both the ML and FL from their previous relationships. This act is of course part of the FL’s job, so that her final demand for space is logical; the ML, a needy soul, seems to be interpreting their intimacy as a real relationship. However, his trust and desire has also helped her, he wasn’t paid at all and he hopefully dogs her steps later in Seoul.

For me the status of the trunks as luxury items was somehow offensive, although practical from the point of the plot. All due respect to the director, but if a woman had directed the show I think that emphasizing the experiences of both of the two main female characters would have helped the balance between the main ML and the 2ML, and developing the men’s responses would have deepened their own emotional performances as well.