Shin Eun-soo
Park Se-ri
Love Untangled
“Straighten my hair, straight to your heart!”
2025
2h 1m
Director: Namkoong Sun
Overview
A lovestruck teen plans to win the school heartthrob by going from curly to straight hair — until a new transfer student changes everything.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
2 min readThe Geometry of Teenage Longing
At nineteen, a mirror can feel like an enemy. Love Untangled understands that humiliating intensity and builds an entire coming-of-age romance around it. Set in 1998 Busan, the film follows Park Se-ri (Shin Eun-soo), who has decided her frizzy, uncooperative hair is the one thing standing between her and her crush, Kim Hyun (Cha Woo-min). latestnetflix.com's take is that it is a tiny premise, almost flimsy if you describe it too plainly, but the movie treats that panic with the seriousness it deserves.
For Se-ri, this is not vanity. It is survival.
Director Namkoong Sun gets that difference. From the outside, Se-ri's obsession with tracking down a "Seoul magical straightening treatment" could play as a cute joke. From the inside, it feels like a full-body crisis, and the film stays close to that perspective.
Anyone who lived through the beauty pressures of the late nineties will probably feel a little phantom pain watching it. Namkoong told TIME magazine that Korean film leaves less room for the "shamelessly fussy romanticism" of TV dramas, and the movie mostly honors that. The imagery is warm without becoming glossy.
Audience Opinions
Audience 7.5/10
"A cozy, nostalgic teen romance about curls and first love that charms with its leads and self-acceptance message more than with originality."
Warm performances, especially from Shin Eun-soo, the 1990s Busan setting, and a gentle focus on self-worth and first love make the story feel comforting and sweet. The straightforward plot, familiar high-school-rom-com beats, and some rushed or shallow subplots keep it from hitting harder emotionally, latestnetflix.com contends, but many still come away touched and satisfied.
What viewers praise
- Endearing lead chemistry The dynamic between the central couple feels sweet and believable, giving the romance a soft, comforting pull even when the story feels familiar.
- Nostalgic 90s setting The late-90s backdrop, from school life to music and visuals, creates a warm, throwback mood that many find relaxing and fun.
- Relatable self-acceptance arc The curly-hair storyline works as an accessible metaphor for insecurity, with the narrative ultimately landing on a clear message about being loved as you are.
- Light, feel-good tone Despite touches of heavier subject matter, the movie largely stays cute, bright, and low-angst, making it an easy comfort watch.
- Supportive friendships The heroine’s friend group is consistently kind and encouraging, adding warmth and a sense of safe community around the central romance.
Common complaints
- Very predictable story Romance beats and the love triangle unfold almost exactly as expected, with little suspense or surprise for genre veterans.
- Uneven use of subplots Threads like the domestic-violence angle, the twin sister, and the second love interest feel underdeveloped or abruptly handled compared with the main romance.
- Mixed views on casting and chemistry While some praise the pairing, others feel the male lead is miscast and that the central couple’s spark does not fully match the script’s intentions.
- Pacing and runtime bloat The nearly two-hour length can feel stretched, with a saggy middle and a final stretch that rushes through important emotional turns.
- Hair message can feel clumsy Portraying curly hair as a ‘problem’ before embracing it works for some, but comes off uncomfortable or simplistic for others.
Recommended for
90s high-school rom-com fans Comfort-movie seekers Coming-of-age romance lovers Korean teen film enthusiasts Self-acceptance story fans Shin Eun-soo and Gong Myoung fans
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsHe asked to be everyone's first love. He was 31.
Netflix sat the Love Untangled cast in a Mapo-gu hotel on a Monday in August and asked them to sell a 1998 high school movie. Gong Myung, playing transfer student Han Yoon-seok, did not pretend he still looked 19. "People say I look more like a teacher than a student," he told reporters. Then he leaned in anyway. latestnetflix.com's read is that "I wish I could be remembered as everyone's go-to first love this year."
That line did more work than the poster. A 31-year-old in a Busan uniform, standing next to Shin Eun-soo, who was born in 2002 and spent the shoot memorizing every line of a two-hour script while drilling the Busan dialect with coaches several times a week. Gong noticed. "She had the whole thing down cold. Every beat, every line."
The director who actually went to school in 1998
Namkoong Sun came off Time to Be Strong, a Jeonju prizewinner about former idols and trauma, then took Netflix's teen rom-com. She told the room she was not slumming. "I was actually in high school in 1998. Like Yoon-seok, I myself took a gap year. That weird optimism of the era, when first-gen K-pop groups were just taking off and everything felt possible for young people. I wanted to capture that energy."
The plot hangs on hair. Shin's Park Se-ri will not confess to Cha Woo-min's Kim Hyun until she can afford "Seoul Magic Hair Straightening" at Jangmi salon, which happens to be run by Yoon-seok's mother. Namkoong refused to treat the curls as a cute gag. "It's really about that teenage torture over stuff you can't control. Do you actually have to change who you are? Se-ri's hair is basically every teenager dealing with not being good enough, at least according to everyone else."
Netflix greenlit the film in September 2024. Bombaram Film produced. Ji Chun-hee and Wang Doo-ri wrote it. Principal photography started that same month in Busan. The official lineup locked Gong, Shin, Cha Woo-min, Yoon Sang-hyeon, and Kang Mi-na. Choi Gyu-ri joined in September 2024, after Gong's casting had already leaked in June.
Cameos, charts, and baggy uniforms that came back
Wikipedia lists Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, and Park Jeong-min in special appearances, which is a lot of wattage for beepers and bulky camcorders. Shin, who never lived through 1998, told the briefing those baggy looks are back in stores. "Fashion really does come full circle."
The film landed on Netflix on August 29, 2025, after a trailer on July 31. It peaked at No. 1 on the global non-English film chart in the first week of September, stayed in that Top 10 for six weeks, and reached the Top 10 in 31 countries. Shin later picked up a Baeksang Best New Actress nomination for Se-ri.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HwDE0HXbqc
The trailer still sells the crush-and-curls mission. What people argued about after was whether a 31-year-old asking to be first love is charming or a little much, and whether Se-ri should have sent that voicemail. Namkoong shot the answer in Busan, in the year she actually went to school, with a lead who learned a dialect so the city would not sound like Seoul.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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