Life Begins at Thirty-Nine
Mi-jo (Son Ye-jin), Chan-young (Jeon Mi-do) and Joo-hee (Kim Ji-hyun) are best friends who face life, love and loss together. We meet them at the age of thirty-nine, ready to make the necessary changes to transition seamlessly into their forties. This is disrupted when they learn that Chan-young is terminally ill, and they begin to prepare for her departure.
The plot of the drama doesn’t sound like anything new, however the writer’s (Yoo Yeong-ah) choice to base the story on the grief experienced by her loved ones as opposed to Chan-young's death is what makes this drama feel intriguing, beautiful, and hauntingly sad.
The main characters’ relationship is set-up from the beginning, Mi-jo is preparing to leave for a yearlong sabbatical and even as they’re aware of the time they’re about to spend apart her and Chan-young still get into a fight about Chan-young’s relationship with Jin-soek (Lee Moo-saeng) who is married.
This interaction creates the perfect setting to understand the friendship dynamic between our three leads: Mi-jo acts as the voice of direction and reason, Chan-young as the rebel on her own course and Joo-hee as the naïve emotional mediator.
I think this interaction makes Chan-young’s character richer and different by simply making her a human being who has made human being choices that set her far from being a saint. It also creates an interesting dynamic between Mi-jo and Chan-young’s relationship with Jin-soek once she finds out that Chan-young is sick, posing the question; what are we willing to overlook or even understand when we realise how fragile and short life is?
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I love that the romance is almost a second thought but occurs at the perfect time for Mi-jo and Joo-hee. Both women struggle with romantic relationships and watching Mi-jo and Seon-woo's (Yeon Woo-jin) relationship blossom while Joo-hee and Hyun-joon’s (Lee Tae-hwan) friendship develops adds to the feeling that even during the worst period of their lives, life still continues.
The use of different family and work dynamics in each character's life enhances this further, allowing the story to lean more to the "slice of life" genre than a tragic drama. We experience their lives, dreams and the challenges they face individually, and even as we know the end we still want more for all of them. These relationships and dynamics are engaging enough to carry us through the harder moments.
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I think the biggest drawback of the drama is the lack of substance and background for side characters' which makes scenes such as the ones with Seon-woo's father feel like time fillers while some of Mi-jo and Seon-woo's scenes seem to drag on.
Regardless of this, I am still captured by the stories of each character, especially the stories that seem to parallel each other but have different outcomes. For instance, Mi-jo’s life as an adopted child being vastly different from Seon-woo’s adopted sister So-wo (Ahn So Hee) as well as Joo-hee’s mother’s cancer journey being vastly different from Chan-young.
The use of props and settings to emphasize these parallels is so wonderfully done, especially the use of flowers as a symbol of love for Mi-jo and a symbol of death for Chan-young.
The story explores so many human topics in a way that leaves me questioning my own perspective on love and death, especially through the character of Chan-young. Joo-hee's character equally intrigues me and I wish we could explore and develop her character and friendship with Chan-young more intentionally.
Even so, the story still manages to draw us in and keep us invested in the leads' friendship, their relationships and beginning and ending of different chapters in each of their lives. I give this drama a rating of 6/10.
Reviewed by Thabang Mashiane
