‘Love In Contract’ review: lightweight rom-com finds a sweet spot perfecting classic tropes

Marriage, at its core, is a contract – that’s how Choi Sang-eun sees it. By day, she calls herself a “single life helper”, or someone who assumes the role of a wife for men in need of a temporary partner. The reasons her clients need a faux spouse always vary – some ask Sang-eun (Forecasting Love and Weather’s Park Min-young) to pose as a trophy wife for family or high school reunions, while others hire her to give a dying grandparent some comfort.

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But a select few clients seek Sang-eun’s help with higher-stakes situations. Take Woo Gwang-nam (Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha’s Kang Hyung-seok). As an only son, his traditionalist parents’ hopes and dreams are riding on him – and they want him to tie the knot as soon as he’s able. There’s just one problem.

As Sang-eun puts it: “He ticked all the boxes of a father’s dream of a perfect son, but he realised he was gay.” Unable and unwilling to come out to his parents, he resorts to asking Sang-eun for help. With 13 years of experience in the field, 12 divorces and plenty of satisfied regulars under her belt, Sang-eun is well-positioned to assist – and she agrees to do it pro bono.

We go through a bit of a time-skip and find Sang-eun continuing to live with Gwang-nam as his best friend, though they are legally divorced. After over a decade of non-stop engagements, marriages and dozens of faux husbands, she has decided that the end of this odd career is approaching: Her credibility as a single life helper has been compromised as she now constantly runs into mutual acquaintances through her business relationships, who now assume she’s unfaithful. So she and Gwang-nam decide to permanently relocate to Canada to start afresh and maybe even find true love for themselves.

Sang-eun has to tie up some loose ends before she can do so, namely terminate her contract with a longtime client, Jung Ji-ho (Seoul Vibe’s Go Kyung-po). Ji-ho is a bit of an enigma to Sang-eun – they’ve been legally married for five years but Ji-ho’s personal life is so shrouded in secrecy that she knows almost next to nothing about him. All she knows is his only request for their arrangement: having silent dinners with him in his home on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

When it becomes time to break the news to Ji-ho, Sang-eun begins to get cold feet. No one can really blame her: there’s a quiet, creeping familiarity that comes with a routine arrangement, even if it’s as simple as three meals a week. She stretches out their contract longer than she planned, and in that time she begins to open up to him, which he reciprocates. She learns that he’s a judge with a debilitating inability to socialise. Unlike Sang-eun’s other clients, he actually cares about her personally, going so far as to let her use his kitchen to cook or buy her concert tickets.

As their relationship blossoms, more complications arise. Sang-eun is due to migrate to the other side of the globe in a matter of weeks but an A-list actor by the name of Kang Hae-jin (Reflection of You’s Kim Jae-young) moves into the apartment directly above Ji-ho. He’s strange in a different way: despite his good looks and fame, he’s not over his first love – who just so happens to be Sang-eun. After complicated familial obligations drive him into a corner, he begins a new contract with Sang-eun.

On paper, Love In Contract sounds like nearly every other Korean rom-com. It certainly ticks nearly all the boxes: Park Min-young as the female lead, a love triangle, fake relationships turned real – the list goes on. The premise of the series itself seems too outlandish to be taken seriously – there are too many risks for a “single life helper” business to ever take off in real life the way Sang-eun’s has. But it’s in the tried-and-true tropes where Love In Contract finds its sweet spot. They might be hackneyed and half-baked in most other series, but when done well, they create the perfect rom-com.

What has made Love In Contract’s classic themes work well so far is its main cast. At this stage in her career, there is little praise to be said about Park that would come as a surprise to K-drama veterans; she’s not known as the rom-com queen for nothing. She slips into each role she’s given with palpable ease, not unlike her character on the show itself.

But Go Kyung-po threatens to steal her spotlight. His character, who offers so many layers to be peeled back as the series chugs along, is brought to life by Go’s sheer attention to detail. Little quirks in his demeanour, subtle blink-and-you’ll-miss-it facial expressions, calculated delivery of his dialogue and interactions with Park on-screen all add up to create a Ji-ho who’s somehow as lovable as he is oafish and at times prickly. And what about his primary romantic rival Kang Hae-jin? Four episodes in, the man’s still mostly a mystery, but, Kim Jae-young has so far done a commendable job at infusing Hae-jin with copious amounts of personality and humour.

Love In Contract is shaping up to be a solid contender for the best Korean rom-com 2022 has had to offer so far. There remain so many aspects to Sang-eun’s past to uncover, and numerous characters and dynamics to love and root for that it becomes a true challenge to not invest and immerse yourself in Sang-eun’s world.

New episodes of Love In Contract air every Wednesday and Thursday at 10:30pm KST on tVN, and are available on Viki in select countries.

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