It's fascinating how "The Man In My House" can spend so much time having its characters repostulate complicated theories of each other's motivation while still having them be so incredibly ignorant of basic character relationships. Part of this is by design. Right now only Deok-bong knows what the relationship is between Na-ri and Nan-gil, and even if Nan-gil is loud and proud of the connection, Na-ri wants to hide it. Why? Because information is power, and thus needs to be hoarded.
In a gossipy context this makes perfect sense. Consider Yeo-joo, who has suffered negatively for trying to snag the fiancé of her co-worker, and struggles to try and overcome this deficit. It is, naturally, pretty much impossible to feel sorry for Yeo-joo. Na-ri doesn't even care about being vindictive, she just wants Yeo-joo removed from easy to view locations. Na-ri doesn't even care about Dong-jin anymore because sheesh, what a wishy-washy boyfriend.
While Yeon-joo and Dong-jin may seem like pointless filler at first glance, they actually do provide some useful perspective- specifically, they demonstrate how Na-ri seems to view every personal slight in a sort of screwball comedy light. That's the only way I can make sense of the soundtrack. Any time the focus is on Na-ri, we're always treated with upbeat silly music that rather belies the serious nature of some pretty major financial issues.
"The Man In My House" consistently is quite good at making Na-ri a romantic comedy protagonist without really making light of her personality defects. Na-ri herself takes a serious look of self-reflection, concluding that she was an imperfect daughter. But as of yet, Na-ri still views herself somewhat over-optimistically as being an inherently powerful champion. There's still too little useful information about the financial situation over the property for Na-ri to conclude she can win this fight on her own.
Be that as it may, plot overall takes a backseat to character development as the other annoying female character in "The Man In My House" (Deok-sim) similarly manages to not be all that sympathetic in pursuit of her generally incomprehensible motive. The excuse there, of course, being that Deok-sim is just a teenager, and more likely to grow out of her defects than adults who are more set in their ways. That Deok-sim is obsessed with Nan-gil is especially interesting in that right, since whatever awful things he has done in the best, Nan-gil is the only character we can indisputably describe as genuinely nice.
Source:HanCinema
