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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Drama Special - Bomi's Room"

Bomi (played by Ahn Seo-hyun) is a fairly typical ten year old girl. She hates school and would rather do silly pseudo grown up things like watching dramas on her computer. Her efforts are frustrated by a mean older sister, Eon-joo (played by Lee Young-ah). Eon-joo is quite a bit older than Bomi, and awfully bossy. A frustrated Bomi eventually agrees to a team-up with an unlikely ally in order to reign her sister in.

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I immediately appreciated how well "Drama Special - Bomi's Room" deals with child logic. Bomi might be a kid, but she's still smart enough to scheme. For most of the drama Bomi's motivation hinges on making her sister happy solely so that Bomi can be left alone to do whatever she wants. Bomi's at just the right age to really start disliking her family- but is still at that awkward age where her mother acts very paternalistic and controlling.

Shim Hyung-tak also adds some excellent panache to the proceedings as Heung-sik, Eon-joo's willful suitor. Sim Hyeon-tak played a similar role in "Let's Eat", and it's something he's good at. The guy's a dork, and even here has been reduced to bargaining with a child in order to gain romantic satisfactrion. But the man's just so earnest about his affections that it's easy to root for the guy to succeed, even if he doesn't actually know what's going on.

Neither does Bomi, for that matter. She does, in the end, get her own private room, but it's at the cost of learning that she's a lot more to Eon-joo than just a little sister. Bomi in many ways represents Eon-joo's own lost dreams- an impulsive decision that explains why Eon-joo is more interested in pestering Bomi than she is in having her own social life. Bomi almost stumbles on to the truth by accident, but is so single-minded in her own childish goals that she abandons a rather essential encounter with a man more important than she could possibly know.

"Drama Special - Bomi's Room" is all about execution. The ending isn't that difficult to predict- it didn't take me that long, and you can probably guess yourself what's going to happen after a careful reading of this review. But coming of age stories are never really about plot twists. It's about Bomi growing up, smart enough to understand the truth, yet not to process the full weight of it. In the near term though, at least she's happy. How relieving to find out at the end that Bomi is still at least partially a child.

Review by William Schwartz

"Drama Special - Bomi's Room" is directed by Kim Sang-hwi, written by Lee Ha-na-I and features Ahn Seo-hyun, Lee Young-ah and Shim Hyung-tak.

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