Loveholic: Drunk in Love

According to Kwon Chil-In's chamber drama Loveholic, detox, rehab and AA meetings aren't the only ways for heavy-drinking Ji Eun (Chu Ja-Hyeon) to get her life back in order after assaulting a guy with a beer bottle during a black out the very night after she's been fired for incompetence. She can also move into the apartment of her best friend Kyung Rin (Han Soo Yeon) then have an affair with her friend's husband (Jung Chan) while basically plagiarizing a novel she admires as she tests her wings as a fledgling writer. That might work, too. Any pent up rage she's got left over can be processed at a local batting cage that thankfully keeps late hours.

As luck would have it, the well-orchestrated chaos that's set off by this unadvisable extramarital affair will help the married doctor discover his wife is already having a dalliance of her own, with his colleague Dong Joo (Kim Heung-Su), a bad-boy radiologist who teaches rock-climbing on the side. But in time, Doctor Number 2 also quickly grows bored with the repressed housewife who can't seem to understand that you can't transform someone's living quarters into a bourgeois home if the walls are all painted black. Also, a padded floral bra can only hold a man's interest for so long.

No one's particularly devastated by the ensuing divorce. Although tears are shed, no one's holding any grudges afterwards either. The doctor and the delinquent look destined for love. The housewife is probably getting a decent alimony. The radiologist has brought his bike back into the bedroom, Better Homes & Gardens be damned. Even the slacker guitarist (Geojung), who sorta had a thing with Ji Eun before he ran off to Japan, returns to Korea where they can resume that type of unsatisfying friendship that occurs between the self-destructive woman with ambitions and the slacker guy with pretensions. You can practically hear the "Remember that time when we..." reveries layered over the end credits.

Venus Talk: Three Times as Depressing

When you're feeling down, you can listen to Bessie Smith, peruse Van Gogh's letters, read the poetry of Anne Sexton, that sort of thing. Somehow there's solace to be found in an artful blues song, a heartfelt complaint or a sublime turn of phrase even when it's rife with depression. Spending time with such work is a respectful use of the "misery loves company" philosophy that takes out the "saddling somebody else with your problems" component. Sometimes, you just need to sulk... alone. Is there any easier way to take your mind off your troubles then a really good "woman's picture"? So you'd think Venus Talk would be the perfect palliative for a case of the doldrums. But Kwon Chil-in girly gabfest, while comedic in tone, is a total bring down because the three main stories feel so doomed, even with their tacked on happy endings. My only question: Which one of these characters' lives is the most depressing?

Is it the one about the single mother (Jo Min-soo), whose insufferable daughter (Jeon Hye-jin) is eating her out of house and home, and whose construction-worker boyfriend (Lee Kyeong-hyeong) balks at marriage, right at the moment the mom's diagnosed with colon cancer? Is it the tale of the nymphomaniacal housewife (Moon So-ri) whose husband (Lee Sung-min) does not require Viagra with other women and whose one-night stand prospect ends up mugging her in an underground parking lot? Or is it story of the successful TV producer (Eom Jeong-hwa) who keeps helping men get ahead in their careers and can't get comfortable with a muscle man (Lee Jae-yoon) young enough to be her son? Before you decide, be forewarned: Things get worse for each — a burst bag of poop, a vaginoplasty, stitches in the head, a car crash and a case of scabies. What's working in their favor is really just a shared bottle of red wine. Apparently, life is worth living if you can drink a little booze then tell your besties lies like "age doesn't matter" and "you're getting prettier every year," despite the crow's feet, the sagging skin, the failing memory, the lost dreams, and the ever-growing pile of failures building at your front door.