Relationships are currency in Remarriage & Desires (Netflix), where a matchmaking service that caters mostly to the uppermost reaches of Korean society becomes the battlefield for a personal war between a woman wronged and the black widow who destroyed her marriage. Marrying for love isn’t in play here. Marrying for gain? That’s more like it.
REMARRIAGE & DESIRES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Kang Nam-Sik stands on the roof of his office building. Despondent, he lights a smoke and gazes out at the nighttime cityscape of Seoul.
The Gist: For 15 years, Seo Hye-Seung (Kim Hee-sun) had it all. A comfortable home in the upscale Gangnam District of Seoul, a gleaming white Audi sedan, and a daughter on track for university. But overnight, her marriage to executive Kang Nam-Sik, and with it the well-off life she knew, utterly crumbled. He had an affair with Jin Yoo-hui (Jung Yoo-jin), a lawyer for his corporation; but though Jin told him to leave Hye-Seung, when Nam-Sik actually did, she said he was an ignorant fool. There’s also the question of the cash he reserved in an account under Jin’s name. She kept it. And after Jin fingered Nam-Sik in a corporate audit, and made accusations of sexual assault against him, he finally took a swan dive off the roof of his office building. After, Hye-Seung could only scroll through her calls and texts to her husband and wish that it had been different.
Now working as a schoolteacher and raising her daughter on her own, Hye-Seung’s mother, meddlesome but loving, signs her up for an exclusive matchmaking service called Rex. (In Korea, they’re called marriage information companies.) Choi Yoo-Sun (Cha Ji-yeon) is Rex’s in-demand marriage maker – hers is a concierge service to Korea’s one percent, and she’s very good at her job. Jin, having sufficiently ripped apart Nam-Sik’s life and marriage, has signed up with Rex in order to match with one of its top-tier members – the CEO’s, law partners, and other success stories of Korean society who rely on Choi to find them a mate. And to that end, she has her eye on Lee Hyung-Ju (Lee Hyun-wook), the handsome young boss of a successful video game company. Hye-Seung, meanwhile, is mad that her mom even signed her up for Rex. But she’s also tired of school system higher-ups and their unwanted advances.
Hye-Seung thought Jin Yoo-hui was in her past. But their mutual involvement in Rex has put them on a collision course. Will Choi Yoo-Sun match Lee Hyung-Ju with Hye-Seung, inciting Jin’s wrath, and a renewed personal war? Will Jin match with him, and destroy Hye-Seung’s life anyway? That wouldn’t be unlike her. Remarriage & Desires is promising plenty of spiciness as it sets up its personal dramas, all of it in the shadow of envy, greed, and class consciousness.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Netflix also features Mine, which has its own perspective on the lives of Korea’s wealthiest percentile. And in Green Mothers Club, a group of women who meet through their childrens’ school navigate secrets and cutting vendettas.
Our Take: Jin Yoo-hui is clearly, happily, the biggest baddie in Remarriage & Desires, and Jung Yoo-Jin plays her with a narrowed side eye and coy half-smile that’s deliciously ready for every one of her abominable indiscretions. But there’s such a sinister undercurrent to so much of what’s happening here, it feels like many more of these characters will justify doing awful things for the sake of a good outcome. Well, good for them, at least. Remarriage & Desires turns on the sacrifices, acknowledgements, and motivations of relationships, or at least their structural requirements. And Choi Yoo-sun, respected matchmaker to the highest echelons of society, is at her most clinical when it comes to the heart’s intangibles. “I don’t believe in innocent love,” she tells Lee Yung-ju. “Love, too, is a materialistic affair that is realized with profit in mind.” Who is she willing to sacrifice, as long as there’s a handsome return on her investment?
Sex and Skin: Nothing too serious.
Parting Shot: Hye-Sung has arrived at Rex’s headquarters, determined to secure a refund for the membership her mother put her into. And who’s just leaving from her own appointment at the matchmaking firm? Jin Yoo-hui. Their eyes meet across the lobby, with Choi Yoo-sun looking on. “It was a struggle, but I thought that was the end of it,” Hye-Sung says in voiceover, referencing the damage Jin caused to her life. “But this is only the beginning with that woman.”
Sleeper Star: Jung Yoo-jin is having the most fun here as Jin, especially in a scene where she more or less gaslights Kang Nam-sik into destroying his marriage and admitting to an embezzlement scheme he had nothing to do with. Her conniving ways have already ruined two peoples’ lives. What does she have planned for Rex and her potential match with Lee Hyung-ju?
Most Pilot-y Line: “Women who are too worldly, with a career, or who are celebrities – they’re not my type. A girl from a prestigious women’s school would do.” The preferences of Lee Hyung-Ju’s haughty mother being assessed before he’s even consulted on who he might prefer to meet is a good indicator of the moneyed and insular world that the Rex service operates in.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Remarriage & Desires is setting up some saucy, soapy storylines as it sets the personal gains of its characters against what they’re willing to do for a win. If love is a game, these people are playing with an entirely new kind of ball.
Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges
