Review | Netflix movie review: Love and Leashes – Seohyun, Lee Jun-young in Korean romantic comedy that boldly takes on the BDSM subculture
- Park Hyun-jin’s Love and Leashes takes a look at BDSM, seeking to normalise it through a romantic comedy
- Despite the subject matter, Girls’ Generation’s Seohyun and Lee Jun-young deliver sweet and wholesome performances
3/5 stars
Where Fifty Shades of Grey failed its target audience because of its portrayal of illicit, taboo-breaking sadomasochism as ultimately rather bland and pedestrian, Park Hyun-jin’s Love and Leashes is guilty of swinging too far in the opposite direction.
In its efforts to normalise BDSM and erase its stigma, the romantic comedy portrays the relationship between an overeager “male-sub” and his inexperienced yet willing “fem-dom” in a manner equally devoid of titillation.
What emerges is a relatively sweet and well-meaning workplace romance between a pair of wholesome, fresh-faced leads that delivers some chaste fuzzy feels, but does so almost in spite of its supposedly salacious subject matter.
Seohyun, the veteran of K-pop group Girls’ Generation veteran and star of Private Lives, is effortlessly endearing as Jung Ji-woo, a single twenty-something office worker who has become frustrated by a society that dictates she must be passive and demure in her search for love.
She is instantly smitten by new colleague Jung Ji-hoo (Lee Jun-young), who is charming and popular but also seems atypically shy.
