Love Untangled

The Geometry of Longing

There is a specific, agonizing geometry to the teenage mind: the belief that if one physical attribute could be altered—a curve flattened, a texture smoothed—the chaotic trajectory of life would suddenly straighten into a perfect line. In *Love Untangled* (2025), director Namkoong Sun explores this fallacy with a gentleness that borders on the reverent. While on the surface a buoyant romantic comedy set in the golden haze of 1998 Busan, the film operates more deeply as a compassionate study of self-loathing masked as self-improvement.

Namkoong, whose previous work *Ten Months* grappled with the claustrophobia of unexpected pregnancy, here turns her lens to a different kind of suffocation: the pressure to conform. The protagonist, Park Se-ri (Shin Eun-soo), views her naturally curly hair not as a genetic trait, but as a moral failing—a "malignant" disorder that stands between her and the affection of the school heartthrob. The film’s visual language reinforces this dichotomy beautifully. The cinematography is bathed in the warm, amber saturation of late-90s nostalgia, yet Se-ri constantly seeks to chemically burn away her own softness, yearning for the sleek, sharp edges of the "Seoul magic straight perm."

The film’s brilliance lies in how it treats this "frivolous" insecurity with profound seriousness. To an adult viewer, a bad hair day is a nuisance; to Se-ri, it is an existential crisis. Shin Eun-soo delivers a performance of jagged vulnerability, capturing the frantic energy of a girl convinced she is a draft awaiting a final edit. The narrative shifts when she "entangles" with Han Yoon-seok (Gong Myoung), a transfer student carrying his own unseen bruises. Their relationship does not blossom through grand gestures, but through the quiet recognition of mutual brokenness.

A pivotal sequence involving a near-drowning captures the film's emotional thesis. When Se-ri saves Yoon-seok, the water strips away the artifices of hair products and social posturing. Wet, messy, and unpolished, they are finally visible to one another. It is a moment that rejects the film’s initial premise—that love requires a makeover. Instead, Namkoong suggests that intimacy is found in the "tangle," in the messy, unkempt realities we try so desperately to hide.

While the third act introduces a heavier subplot involving domestic strife—a narrative swerve that threatens to unbalance the film’s delicate tone—it ultimately serves to ground the romance. It reminds us that while Se-ri worries about the surface, Yoon-seok is surviving the depths. This contrast matures the story, moving it from a quest for aesthetic perfection to a realization of emotional survival.

*Love Untangled* is a deceptively simple film. It refuses to mock the vanity of youth, recognizing instead that our early obsessions with appearance are often our first clumsy attempts at controlling our destiny. By the time the credits roll, the film has not just untangled a teenage love triangle, but dismantled the damaging myth that we must be "straightened" out to be worthy of love. In an era of curated digital perfection, Namkoong Sun offers a warm, analog embrace of the frizz, the flaws, and the beautifully unkempt human heart.