Warning: This post contains spoilers for Love Untangled
Park Se-ri (Light Shop’s Shin Eun-soo), the teen protagonist in Netflix Korean-language rom-com Love Untangled, knows without a doubt that her curly hair is the reason behind all of her romantic troubles. If only she had the same sleek, shiny hair as her fraternal twin sister Hye-ri, she’d have a loving boyfriend—specifically, high school heartthrob Kim Hyun (Melo Movie’s Cha Woo-min)—and everything in her life would fall in place.
Se-ri’s plan to straighten her hair (and fix her life) finds new focus with the arrival of Han Yun-seok (Mercy For None’s Gong Myung), a quiet, seemingly unambitious transfer student from Seoul whose mother, Baek Jang-mi (Hong Eun-hee), happens to be a hair stylist. Jang-mi agrees to give Se-ri’s hair the “Seoul magical straightening treatment” for free if Se-ri helps Yun-seok, who has injured his foot, get around. As Se-ri spends time with Yun-seok, the two grow closer. Will she stay committed to confessing her love to Kim Hyun, or does Yun-seok have her heart?
While Korea has become known for its romantic comedy series, Love Untangled (also known as 고백의 역사, or “History of Confession”), out now on Netflix, is the relatively rare lighthearted Korean-language film that gets global distribution. When it comes to cinema, the East Asian country is better known for violent revenge dramas, such as Park Chan-wook’s Old Boy, or disturbingly insightful class critiques, such as Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.
“Korean rom-com TV dramas are known for their shamelessly fussy romanticism and fantasy elements,” Love Untangled director Sun Namkoong tells TIME. “My guess is that since film is a slightly more serious medium, there’s less room for the full-blown feast of awkward overreaction that differentiates Korean rom-com from its western counterparts.”
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