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| Netflix's new thriller series, "A Model Family," hit the platform on Aug. 12. Courtesy of Netflix |
By Lee Gyu-lee
Director Kim Jin-woo, whose previous work includes the detective series, "Queen of Mystery," (2017) and Netflix's "Love Alarm 2" (2021), shared that his latest series, "A Model Family," is a mixture of a Korean and a European-style thriller.
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| Director Kim Jin-woo / Courtesy of Netflix |
"European-style (thriller) genre series tend to put more detail into the sub-characters rather than being dynamic. So I thought about blending such interesting and different styles of approaches to the genre in our series."
Netflix's new original series, which was released on Aug. 12, follows the story of a cash-strapped patriarch, Dong-ha (Jung Woo), who is a part-time lecturer at a college with two children and a wife.
Despite his idyllic-looking life and happy family, it is on the verge of falling apart, with his wife, Eun-ju (Yoon Jin-seo), asking for a divorce when he lost the money to pay for surgery for his sick son.
One day, he unwittingly steals a pile of cash that belongs to a drug cartel. With both police and the cartel after the money, the cartel's second-in-command, Gwang-cheol (Park Hee-soon), offers a way for Dong-ha to save his family: working for him as a drug courier.
The director said that he wanted to explore the reality and conflicts within different forms of family.
"We usually refer to a family as those related by blood. But for cartel gangs, the definition of family is distorted and unconventional. So we also put their definition of family as part of the concept for the series," he said.
"In reality, relationships of family are always rough … even for a model family that seems perfect from the outside, you would never know unless you are a member. So when you become part of it, you see what kind of conflict, instability and frictions they have in reality."
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| A scene from the series, "A Model Family" / Courtesy of Netflix |
Adding that such conflicts, most of the time, are caused by the lack of communication, he said that he hopes the viewers will see what put Dong-ha's family through such a situation.
"Eun-joo is not asking for a divorce because of Dong-ha's financial struggle, but he thinks that's the reason ... And as this family, far from being a model, goes through a series of difficulties, I hoped viewers would put focus on why they came to face such situations rather than how they get through them," he said.
"It would be nice if they could ask themselves, 'How did Don-ha's family come to fall apart?' and 'How come Eun-joo can't rely on her husband?' and 'Why does Gwang-cheol want to find the meaning of life in a cartel?' and think back on the real meaning of life through these characters' subplots."
Kim expressed that the process of working with Jung and Park, the two leads, was such an incredible experience.
"What I liked the most is that we had such great communication. It was really fun to discuss with Jung and Park the things that I wanted to develop (in the series). We had such good chemistry in making the scenes through discussions," he said.
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