Weekend Classic
Marriage Contract (KDrama Review & Summary)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
Marriage Contract poster
- Genre: Fake Marriage, Romance, Melodrama, Family
- Release Date: March 2016
- Origin: South Korea
- KDrama: 16 Episodes
Cast:
- Lee Seo-jin as Han Ji-hoo
- Uee as Kang Hye-soo
- Kim Yong-geon as Han Seong-gook
- Park Jung-soo as Yoon Seon-yeong
- Lee Hwi-hyang as Oh Mi-ran
- Kim Young-pil as Han Jeong-hoon
- Shin Rin-ah as Cha Eun-seong
- Kim Kwang-kyu as Park Ho-joon
- Kim Yoo-ri as Seo Na-yoon
- Jung Kyung-soon as Shim Yeong-hee
- Lee Hyun-geol as Kong Soo-chang
- Pyo Ye-jin as Hyun A-ra
- Ahn Ji-hoon as Jo Seung-joo
- Kim So-jin as Hwang Joo-yeon
Synopsis & Review
Marriage Contract is GlobalGranary’s weekend classic. I have heard many good things about this 2016 drama.
Anyway, I can’t believe how much I cried in this film. I love both the leads. They both acted their hearts out.
Uee was elegantly heartbroken with the unfairness of life while Lee Seo-Jin was so emotional with things beyond his control.
The story is rather contentious, it is not that run of the mill, rich boy meets poor girl and after so many misunderstanding lead a happy life together.
It would probably lead into that scenario for a while, but there is more to it than that because it involves organ trafficking.
Probably, selling of organs is too controversial to really tackle in a drama that in the end the script cower away from it.
Hye Soo was a widow, who lost her husband before their child was even born.
Seven years later, she was still struggling to pay off the debts incurred by her dead husband from a nasty loan shark.
She and her daughter are constantly on the move from pillar to post, trying to evade the loan shark.
She was at the end of tether after once again the loan shark had found her new home and was threatened to pay up 1M or else she will be sold off to prostitution.
She overheard the conversation between the manager and owner of the restaurant, where she works as a sous chef.
They were talking about finding a woman to have a fake marriage with and she would then be paid 1-2M to donate part of her liver to the owner’s mother, who suffers from cirrhosis and needed transplant.
Though grossly inappropriate, Hye Soo volunteered herself to be the fake wife and donate her liver for cash.
Hye Soo was immediately able to pay off the loan shark in full upon attaching her seal on the marriage contract with Ji Hoo.
Ji Hoo belongs to a dysfunctional family. He is a chaebol, though he was a son of his father’s mistress, who was an actress and now needed a transplant.
His father controls everything with an iron rod or walking stick. He was an Alpha male, though to be fair he does favour Ji Hoo more than his older brother, Jeong Hoon, who was a womanising, violent and spoilt man.
As Hye Soo prepares for the surgery, Ji Hoo starts to be charmed by Hye Soo’s daughter. He likes having a young family and started to care for Hye Soo as well.
Unfortunately, Hye Soo fate is not one for happy ever after ending as she found out that she has a brain tumour which is inoperable. A terminal illness that would only allow her to live for five years at the most.
It is not a bad story, it is not maudlin all the time, there are some lighter moments.
I totally recommend this drama as essential viewing.
4****(out of 5)
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