Secret Love Affair (DVD) (Ep.1-16) (End) (Multi-audio) (English Subtitled) (JTBC TV Drama) (Singapore Version) DVD Region All

Reteaming with A Wife's Credentials director Ahn Pan Suk and writer Jung Sung Joo, who were awarded Best Director and Best Screenwriter at the 50th Baeksang Arts Awards, Kim Hee Ae plays Oh Hye Won, a 40-year-old arts foundation director married to an ineffectual music professor (Park Hyuk Kwon) who is also part of the foundation's upper crust. Her husband, desperate for a protege and the bragging rights that come with it, is the one who first discovers and seeks to develop 20-year-old Lee Sun Jae (Yoo Ah In), a raw piano prodigy from the other side of the tracks. But it's Hye Won who wins the trust and heart of the enamored Sun Jae, who sees through the hypocrisy of Hye Won's empty gilded world and refuses to play along.

With Hye Won and Sun Jae being twenty years apart in age on top of her being married and his mentor, this is not some fairytale "noona" romance so popular in Korean urban romcoms, but a properly scandalous May-December affair filled with stolen kisses and secret rendezvous. The age gap carries through to the casting with Kim Hee Ae, 47 at the time, and 28-year-old Yoo Ah In being two decades apart in real life. The sizzling chemistry between the two leads builds the slow-burning development of their characters' ambiguous love and intense longing, and somehow Hye Won and Sun Jae's illicit affair turns into the most pure and innocent relationship amid the drama's corrupt and self-serving circle of high-society folks.

Besides Kim Hee Ae and Yoo Ah In's outstanding performances, Secret Love Affair leaves a very deep impression with its complete and artful presentation of the drama's world, from the art and music direction to the script and cinematography. Given the backdrop, the soundtrack naturally features classical music, but the production actually integrates the classical performances in a narratively meaningful way, notably in its use of classical piano duets as a stand-in for courtship and climax. Visually, Secret Love Affair has a very distinct aesthetic formed by elegant sets, dim lighting and rich sepia tones - all of which creates the feeling of being classy and cloistered as well as dark and decadent. The cinematography often takes on a voyeuristic feel as the camera peeks from behind objects to observe the conspiratorial interactions of the drama's wealthy troublemongers.