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Spring Waltz

Posted By Claire on July 7, 2009

*originally posted at Dramaworld

I’ll get around to re-capping Shining Inheritance episode 22 eventually, but for now, I started watching Spring Waltz as a way to assuage my Shining Inheritance withdrawal until next weekend comes around. Spring Waltz bears no similarity to Shining Inheritance whatsoever except that it stars Han Hyo Joo, but I need me a fix of something Brilliant-Legacy-related and it comes highly recommended from friends. It’s the last of the Four Seasons series by director Yoon Suk-Ho(the others being Winter Sonata, Autumn Fairy Tale, and Summer Scent), and stars Han Hyo Joo and Seo Do-Young, who is currently playing in Hyun Bin’s Friend, Our Legend.

Episode 1 recap:

Eun Young(Han Hyo Joo) is a poor Korean with designer dreams who arrives in Vienna, Austria to take a look around the museums. On her flight there she strikes up a conversation with her seatmate, Yi Na, who tells her that she’s going to Vienna to see a friend whom she hasn’t seen in 15 years but whose memory she has always cherished. She shows Eun Young an article on her friend, Jae Ha, in a magazine and boasts that he will quickly become famous. In Vienna, Yi Na goes to see Jae Ha, a cold, brilliant concert pianist, but he doesn’t even remember her. The only childhood memory he cherishes is that of Eun Young, whom he knew for a brief, poignant period in middle school but afterward lost track of. Jae Ha’s manager(Daniel Henney), befriends Eun Young when he finds her wandering around Vienna rather at a loss, and gives her a ticket to come to Jae Ha’s concert in Salzburg the next day. Jae Ha and Eun Young end up sharing the same train booth on their way from Salzburg to Vienna, and Jae Ha, to his surprise, finds himself drawn to her when she reminds him of his childhood friend. At the concert, Eun Young is shocked to the find that the man she traveled with is actually the pianist she’s come to see perform, and quietly leaves, feeling embarrassed over having been rude to him. Jae Ha tells the audience that because of a childhood memory that came back to him today, he’ll play a special encore piece. Eun Young hears it as she goes down the stairs outside, and quietly sits down as the music takes her back into her memories.

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Episodes 2 and 3 are mostly dreadfully boring childhood flashbacks, so I won’t go into that(I’m glad someone told me this was good, because I think otherwise I would have given up on this by now). However, I expect it to pick up once the present-day romance starts, and at least it’s highlighted by exquisite cinematography – the colors remind me of nothing so much as the classic French film Amelie, all gold and green and vivid shades.

Random episode 2 cap:

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