A washed-up luxury trunk, a dead body, and a contract wife—many things are not what they first seem in The Trunk, a deliciously nuanced satire about the joys and (murderous) pains of modern marriage.
It is a rare treat in k-drama to come across a show that has all the components in place, is as marketed, and is simply and quietly GOOD.
The Plot:
Marriage is only the beginning. At least, for NM, it is.
Noh In-ji (Seo Hyun-Jin) has an odd job: she works as a contract spouse for NM, a shadowy company specializing in temporary contract marriages. This service is apparently nothing new in the marriage industry, as there will always be Korean men who need a wife for show, such as dying men and gay men. In-ji has “married” them one after another and has produced “wonderful” results for the company.
After wrapping up her fourth contract, In-ji is paired with Han Jeong-won (Gong Yoo), a wealthy drug-addicted chaebol heir. Soon, we find that Jeong-won had reluctantly agreed to the contract marriage to please his ex-wife, Seo-yeon, who strangely signed him up for NM in the first place.
As Noh In-ji and Han Jeong-won navigate their unconventional partnership, the seemingly mismatched couple grows closer despite their efforts to get through the contracted year quietly. This attraction poses a problem– and a challenge– for Seo-yeon, who scrambles to assert her dominance in Jeong-won’s life again.
Amid this bizarre love triangle, a mysterious trunk is discovered in a lake alongside a dead body. As the case threatens to unravel the dark secrets surrounding In-ji and her past life, Jeong-won also discovers a complicated thicket of lies, half-truths, and painful realities both spouses could never be ready for.
Our Review
To quote the biophysicist and Nobel Prize winner Max Delbruck, “I don’t understand this. It must be wrong.” There is something so off-kilter yet so compelling in The Trunk that if you came aboard looking for a warm, middle-aged contract marriage romance, you’d immediately be disappointed. But you’d also be too intrigued to stop watching.
The first thing that strikes you in The Trunk is how visually arresting but weirdly dissonant it all looks and feels. Director Kim Kyu-tae of Our Blues and That Winter the Wind Blows fame foregoes his trademark bombastic emotional heft for something trickier and much more layered. He makes good on establishing a disconcerting atmosphere for the entire drama, from the vast shots of an icy lake to the cavernous, Panopticon-like home of Jeong-won. The show is filled with empty spaces to reflect the equally empty interior lives of In-ji, Jeong-won, and everyone close to them. The soft spirals and circular bends of his mansion, in particular, serve as cruel molds that hold the icy loneliness within and add to the painful sense of isolation of the couple, as if both were trapped in a subliminal, water-colored belly of a whale they cannot swim out of. It doesn’t take long before we are driven, like Jeong-won, to find respite in the velvety warmth of a stranger.
The Trunk runs heavily on the exquisite performances of two veterans who skillfully finesse the tricky emotional
landscape of their complicated characters without once falling into unremarkable tropes or cliches. There is chemistry, for sure, and even a sense of sweetness between the odd couple, but the actors always manage to rein it in and locate their chemistry within the realm of a host of other more complicated sub-plots in the show.
Gong Yoo is perfect as the lackadaisical Jeong-won, who is still helplessly in love with his ex-wife, while Seo Hyun-jin as In-ji easily blurs the line between being a contract wife and a real partner. As both characters deftly peel off layers and layers that have been hardened by years of trauma, violence, and all manner of abuse, we can’t help but be drawn deeper and deeper into their convoluted mess of a marriage.
Beyond the two K-drama megastars is the unexpected brilliance of Jung Yun-ha, who plays the calculating ex-wife Seo-yeon. Jung delivers a stellar interpretation of what an abusive and manipulative woman would be without the usual hysterics or comical evil smirk. Often seen in movies more than on the small screen, Jung brings an unmistakable heft and intelligence into her complex role, and one can only hope to see more of her work in the future.
Based on the book of the same name by Kim Ryeo-ryeong, the writing of The Trunk is as clipped and tight as its secretive characters, making this show refreshingly devoid of cheap tropes and easy resolutions. If one was hoping for a straight-up fake-to-real marriage tale, one would be sorely disappointed as this show takes its serious time unraveling why In-ji and Jeong-won are the way they are and why falling in love may be the last thing on their minds.
More than just a dark satire on the fate of modern marriage, The Trunk brazenly offers the full panoply of the disadvantages marriage and motherhood inflict on many women. It even dares to display the unthinkable regret some women feel when they become mothers and how their dreams are worth more than caring for their children. Some truths in this show may be hard to watch, but they are certainly worth examining.
In fact, this show takes a sledgehammer to the fantasies of “happily ever after” and, in its place, shows the freeing power of divorce, brutal honesty, and of coming to terms with our demons alone. It realizes the cruel truth of modern loneliness and the myriad of ways we all compensate to fill the void inside. Ultimately, this show is a beautifully orchestrated treatise on control and abuse, not just the kind that men inflict on women but also the stealthy ways women do it to their men as well.
Like its complicated characters, The Trunk has so much more going on beneath the surface than we first see. But despite the angst and trauma that hound everyone in the show, the show does offer the occasional respite. It posits that the way out of the bone-crushing loneliness can be found in the crumbs of human kindness and basic decency. It may even be found in – gasp! – the arms of a stranger disguised as a spouse.
Stream if... you're in the mood for a mature, angsty, adult romance--- if we can even call this a romance. Also, Gong Yoo in sexy scenes. We die.
Skip if... you want a straight-up fluffy contract marriage trope filled with sweet romance and thrilling kisses.
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