Finland Papa is a little drama from a small cable channel, and isn’t that just the perfect recipe for a hidden gem? Quiet and sweet — with the perfect tinge of magic, humor, and melancholy — I think Finland Papa might be my new favorite thing.
EPISODES 1-2
I knew I would love this drama from the opening scene. Yes, that’s all it took. We meet our young heroine LEE YURI (Kim Bora) at the columbarium in mourning clothes. From the one-point perspective of the cinematography, to the opening line (“Grandma… Dad… You are both together again now”), this scene tells us everything we need to know. And not just about our heroine’s current situation, but also about how the story will be told to us: sparingly, carefully, and with minimum noise.
Since we’re meeting Yuri in medias res, freshly grieving for her Grandmother, much of the first episode relies on flashbacks to show us what was and contrast that to what is. I thought this might be a technique of the first episode only, but the second one does the same — taking us from our heroine’s current state of loneliness and grief, and then looking back on the cozy little life that was disturbed by so much pain.
So, we see Yuri alone in the house she grew up in with her grandmother, eating prepared food from the convenience store. The contrast, we see, is with the many many meals she had spent eating with her loving Grandma — homemade food, affection, and more often than not the company of her friends, too.
Many of the flashbacks are during Yuri’s high school years, and we see her hanging with her two boy pals BAEK WOO-HYUN (Kim Woo-seok) and JI YONG-JOON (Kim Joon-ho). These three are adorable together, whether they are eating at the table with her grandmother, or walking home together and scaring Yong-joon with ghost stories. There is also most definitely something in the air between Woo-hyun and Yuri, though he might be the only one that knows it at that point.
The sweetness of these scenes makes Yuri’s current loneliness even more pronounced, and that echoes even loader one day when she meets Yong-joon while he’s back home during a college break. He sweetly says he would have gone to her grandmother’s funeral if she’d told him, and then the two hang out in his room and reminisce. Looking at their old yearbook is just an excuse to talk about Woo-hyun, who’s vaguely noted as “not around anymore.”
We’re not sure what’s happened to him yet, but the drama’s structure of unpacking past occurrences via retelling is very effective and we’ll likely hear Woo-hyun’s story in our next episodes. We do know, though, that around last Christmas, Woo-hyun knew he wouldn’t be around for Yuri’s Christmas Eve birthday, so he gifts her an adorable pair of socks. This precious scene is contrasted to Yuri, now alone and cold in the empty house, prompted to go find those socks.
But what happened to Woo-hyun? In some of the more recent-past flashbacks, he looks a little pale, so I’m wondering if that will explain his absence. For now, though, it’s enough for us to see how sweet he was to Yuri, to see how he looked at her, and to hear his promise to her grandmother that she won’t ever have to eat alone.
The idea of eating alone is one of the story’s main themes, and it’s beautifully pulled out for such a simple story. In one of the flashbacks, Woo-hyun teases Yuri relentlessly about a pact they made as kids — all these rules they would keep about making the bed and such — and as Episode 2 opens we see Yuri looking at one of the items. It reads that no matter what happens, you should always try to eat meals with others.
Back when Yuri was visiting Yong-joon, there was a poster in his room that caught her fancy: it was a photo of the aurora borealis and the bottom a job advertisement to work “as a family member” for Finland Papa cafe. A noted requirement of the job is for everyone to eat their meals together.
For Yuri, who can’t stand another sad store-bought meal at the house that reminds her of her too-fresh grief, she decides to head over the cafe. Not only were the aurora borealis something her grandmother loved, but Finland Papa is just a ride on her bike away from her home. Everything seems to fit quite well.
At Finland Papa she meets the couple and their son that work there — the mother is MARI (Hwang Seok-jung), the father is KAKA (Jung Min-sung), and their son is TOTO (Jang Do-yoon). As Yuri rides up they’re actually arguing — Toto has had it with his parents and walks off muttering curses under his breath while Yuri is simultaneously invited to dinner. Toto has a foul mouth, Mari says, but he’s an excellent cook. Sure enough, Yuri sits at their gigantic dining table and gobbles up her first home-cooked meal (of omurice) for the first time in the weeks since her grandmother has died. With her meal eaten, she’s hired, and the strange magic of the Finland Papa cafe begins.
From the all-too-familiar coincidences, to the strange meta-commentary of the cafe workers throughout the second episode, we start to get the feeling that this whole scenario is a setup. But not in a creepy way — the drama is too soft for that. It’s more like an elaborate diorama someone has set up to gently comfort someone they love. (Can it be Woo-hyun…?)
The aurora borealis, the fact the Yuri needed a job, and Yuri’s need for companionship were the first layer, but there’s so much more. The second episode opens up with Toto making the cafe’s famous menu item: a santa parfait. We’ve seen this exact parfait before, in another sweet flashback scene with the boys and Yuri enjoying her grandmother’s creation. Then, back in the present, the customer who ordered the parfait oh-so-conveniently doesn’t want it anymore, so it’s give to Yuri. One taste and her eyes well up with tears. And then Mari, Kaka, and Toto fly out of the kitchen after they’ve noticed.
Turns out, one of the many “rules” of Finland Papa cafe is that they have to “listen to the story of a person who cries” — and that’s just what they do. The four of them sit at the giant table yet again, and while Yuri tells them about her grandma, her father, and her childhood, we see it all in flashback. Her tattooed gangster father came home with an infant daughter, her grandmother raised her, her father come home stabbed one night, and after that her grandmother became ill. It’s so very sad, but also somehow saved from being overly sentimental.
While Yuri is telling her story, Toto has a side comment about how they’ll get bonus points for listening to her “hard to tell” story. Then, when Yuri concludes her story, Mari jumps up and starts this gentle dance to Polynesian music — the same music we see Yuri’s father playing in a flashback. Again, so many little hints and glimmers of this healing cafe being solely for Yuri’s own comfort.
The drama skirts a fine line, though, because it is in danger of being eerie — especially when we’re shown that the entire cafe is under surveillance — but to me the story’s tone keeps it from any creepiness. Instead, it feels a bit like a storybook, where the heroine goes on an adventure that’s been custom tailored to provide what she needs (and the drama’s slightly over-saturated palette also makes it feel a bit fairytale-like).
Finland Papa is only six episodes, and with a 25-minute run-time per episode, for me it’s the perfect length for a drama that is, to quote Jane Austen, “perfect in being too short.” The story is simple but deep, and has just the right about of oddness to not only keep my interest up, but to give me the feeling that the writer and PD are quite well-matched: the direction of this script could make or break it.
Though I’m unsure how I’ll feel about this large-scale healing scheme when it comes to light, I do like the idea behind it. And in a world of drama-making where sometimes it feels like “more is more” rules every story, it’s refreshing to watch a drama that’s crisp, simple, and leans only on the essentials.
