In the twilight days after a holiday, it might seem difficult to go back to a festive-genre film and find the same level of enthusiasm to watch it again. However, for those movies that are able to slip by through the guise of the holiday-adjacent, enjoyment can be perennial.
When I watched the Netflix original Love and Leashes during the Valentine’s Day weekend, I realized that the movie’s complexity bordering on a different subgenre makes the movie rom-com-adjacent. It’s a term that should never catch on (mainly because most movies depicting a romantic relationship might be considered as such), but I imagine Love and Leashes was meant to be another notch in the rom-com quota. It certainly has the laser-cut quirks of a Korean slice-of-life (and you can most certainly bet that there is a slo-mo scene of two characters about to haphazardly touch, replayed through different vantage points). However, the movie’s navigation in the developing BDSM dynamic between two-coworkers has what black comedies strive for.
I have to check myself in this: is it a black comedy because it explores a topic that might be considered taboo? BONDing was another Netflix original that came out a few years ago. While the first season was criticized for harmful representation of the community, it was indeed another form of media that opened the topic up. There are two things to Love and Leashes that I admit not having an encompassing knowledge about: BDSM and K-dramas. But here we are, and I probably really speak for myself in saying that the movie approaches the topic more respectfully than I could imagine, while keeping the charms and trinkets of humanistic love and pitfalls in a blossoming romance. I thought I would avert my eyes a lot more, but this shit is pretty cute.
Adapted from the 2015 web comic Moral Sense, Love and Leashes follows Ji-woo (played by Seohyun, notably from the legendary second-gen K-pop group Girls’ Generation), who is a competent employee at a children’s toy company. While generally aloof, she has some interest in the new co-worker Ji-hoo (Lee Jun-young). They share a similar name and the same surname, which comes into play when Ji-woo accidentally opens Ji-hoo’s package, containing a spiked neck collar that seems too suspiciously large for Ji-hoo’s supposed poodle. Rolling with the punches of the plot, Ji-hoo tells Ji-woo that he’s interested in looking for a master-servant relationship.
There’s a lot about this film that I don’t think I could gracefully put into sentences in order to create a well-formed review and do justice to the topic and the film itself. Therefore, to center more of my opinions instead of making generalized statements about BDSM or K-dramas, I’m going to poise it as a question-and-answer format (both provided by me).
Q: Did I like this film?
A: Yes! I don’t think I would have ever been into a rom-com about BDSM, because I’m hesitant that they could make fun of the topic or have too much fun with the topic without actually treading on it. Somehow, Love and Leashes felt more about respect between two people than it was about sexual tendencies, which I think is both a surprise and the right direction for the movie.
Q: Why is it a surprise?
A: BDSM tends to be seen as a relationship of a sexual nature, but the movie was able to display the dynamic between Ji-woo and Ji-hoo through a very specific balance of gratification and configuration of their relationship that forgoes the dependency of needing it to be raunchy to be interesting (in their contract, it was indicated that there would be no touching). It’s not to say that this movie is completely PG, but scenes between the leads here hit very differently than those in 50 Shades or 365 Days.
The other thing that’s interesting is the social progression that South Korea is going through. Keep in mind that I haven’t seen many Korean films outside nominated or cult biggies, but it was almost six years ago when South Korea chose The Age of Shadows as its entry for the Oscars instead of the internationally revered The Handmaiden. Though The Age of Shadows was a hit, the explicit sexual (and homosexual, at that) nature of The Handmaiden may have deterred the country from allowing it to represent. Now there’s this movie that opens with Ji-woo disagreeing with sponsoring a YouTube star because of their homophobic comments. I’m not sure of the journey that it took to get here, but I’m glad we’re here.
Q: How were the performances?
A: Sincere and dedicated. Another surprise is how easy Seohyun and Lee fell into their roles, especially coming from the era of squeaky-clean K-pop. Did Seohyun choose this role to break out of her maknae role, or because her old management company SM sounded too familiar? Alexa, play “Bad Girl” by SNSD.
Love and Leashes
2022
dir. Park Hyun-jin
118 mins
Now streaming on Netflix!
