My Sassy Girl
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| My Sassy Girl | |
 My Sassy Girl movie poster |
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|---|---|
| Directed by | Kwak Jae-yong |
| Produced by | Shin Chul |
| Written by | Kim Ho-sik Kwak Jae-yong |
| Starring | Cha Tae-hyun Jun Ji-hyun Kim In Moon Song Ok Sook Han Jin Hee Hyun Sook Hee Kim Il Woo Yoo Soon Chul Oh Ki Hwan Seo Dong Won Han Jae Min Park Chan Yoo Kim Min Jae Hu Nam Hwi Kim Young Min |
| Distributed by | Cinema Service |
| Release date(s) | July 27, 2001 (South Korea) |
| Running time | 123 min. 137 min. (director's cut) |
| Language | Korean |
| IMDb profile | |
| Korean name | |
| Hangul: | 엽기적인 그녀 |
| Hanja: | 獵奇的인 그女 |
| Revised Romanization: | Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo |
| McCune-Reischauer: | Yǒpkijǒgin Kǔnyǒ |
My Sassy Girl (엽기적인 그녀; literally, "That Bizarre Girl") is a 2001 South Korean romantic comedy film. It is partially based on the true story told in a series of love letters written by Kim Ho-sik, a man who posted them online. The film is directed by Kwak Jae-yong.
The film was extremely successful in South Korea. When My Sassy Girl was released throughout East Asia, it became a mega blockbuster hit in the entire region, from Japan, China, Taiwan, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, to the point where it was drawing comparisons to Titanic. Through positive word-of-mouth, the movie eventually became one of the most popular South Korean films among Asian-Americans in the United States. An American remake (directed by Yann Samuell, director of Love Me If You Dare) is announced to be released in 2007.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
[edit] Part one
The film tells the story of a male college student (Cha Tae-Hyun) and a girl (Jun Ji-hyun) whose name is never given (in the movie) and will be referred to as the Girl below. Our male protagonist, Gyeon-woo, cannot seem to catch a break. His romantic prospects are so pathetic that even his mother tries to help out, telling him to go visit his aunt so she can introduce him to this girl she knows. Gyeon-woo has more pride than that so he refuses, despite his mother's insistence that he just go and visit his aunt since his cousin, her son, recently passed away and she always thought they were very alike. After a night out with his friends, he heads to the train station to catch a ride home. There he sees the Girl, stone drunk and standing precariously close to the edge of the train platform as the train approaches; he pulls her to safety just in time.
Inside the train, Gyeon-woo cannot help but stare at the girl wavering back and forth, who he is slightly attracted to but repulsed by her drunkenness. Finally, she throws up on an old man, calls Gyeon-woo "honey" and faints. The old man chides him and tells him to take care of his girlfriend. Gyeon-woo, confused, carries her all the way to the nearest motel. While he is showering, her phone rings and he runs out to answer it, still naked. He informs the caller of his location, and is soon busted in on by a pair of police officers. A short struggle later, he is taken to jail.
After getting out of jail, he receives a call from the Girl telling him to meet her at a café, where he details the previous night. She seems irritated and drags Gyeon-woo off to a bar, where she gets hammered again, resulting in yet another trip to the same motel.
The Girl has an abrasive and aggressive personality. After this second overnight stay at the motel, she starts to think of ways to get Gyeon-woo out of class to hang out with her. For example, faced with a feisty teacher, she succeeds in getting him out of class by claiming to be on the way to an abortion, with him being the father. Her mood swings wildly from joyful to downright violent but Gyeon-woo puts up with it and lets her abuse him for her amusement.
She is an aspiring scriptwriter and throughout the movie gives Gyeon-woo three different screenplays from different genres. The first is an action movie - "The Demolition Terminator" - which switches gender roles, symbolically having the Girl save her helpless lover (Gyeon-woo). The second is a wild perversion of one of Gyeon-woo's beloved melodramas in which the Girl, having died, asks that her lover be buried along with her, even though he's still alive. The resulting situation is quite humorous. The last is a wuxia/samurai movie spoof full of genre clichés and anachronisms. All three feature the same common thread: the Girl is from the future.
Despite all the horrible things Gyeon-woo endures, he is determined to stick with the Girl. He feels a pain inside her and wants to ease it. So no matter what happens, he bites his tongue and trudges on. Throughout the first half of the movie, she is resolute in her pain, dishing it out in plenty. As the second half comes around however, she begins to change; she shows vulnerability. But not before a special nighttime trip to the amusement park where the pair encounter an AWOL soldier who holds them hostage and, mistaking them for a real couple, telling them to appreciate each other and the love they have.
[edit] Part two
The second - and the more dramatic- half of the movie begins with the Girl waiting for Gyeon-woo after school. She takes him out to the park and suddenly complains about the pain her high heels are causing her. In the subsequent conversation, she convinces Gyeon-woo to switch shoes with her. Overjoyed, she tells him to chase her around the park and which he does until it starts raining. They walk to her house where Gyeon-woo meets her parents, after which he overhears a massive argument between the Girl and her mother over her relationship with him. Gyeon-woo does not hear from her for a long time.
For their 100th-day anniversary, she calls him and asks him to bring her a rose during class. He does this, leading to a touching and romantic scene where he follows the beautiful melody of Canon in D of Pachelbel to where she is, which is onstage at a piano concert in front of a audience of hundreds. But the night unfolds further and again he is faced with her parents, the Girl herself unconscious for the third time. Her father, infuriated, arranges a break-up. At this point, Gyeon-woo realizes how special the Girl is. He is unwilling to let her go.
The Girl asks Gyeon-woo to meet her for dinner, but when he arrives, he is surprised to see her with a date. The girl introduces Gyeon-woo to him as "her friend." During dinner, the Girl leaves the table briefly, leaving Gyeon-woo and the date by themselves. Gyeon-woo is broken hearted over the loss of the girl, but his love compels him to ensure her happiness. He instructs the other guy to follow 10 rules to make the Girl happy. Some of these are humorous ("Do not let her drink more than 3 drinks", "Be prepared to spend time in prison") but others are very sentimental. Unbeknownst to Gyeon-woo, the Girl hears these 10 rules and rushes to find him.
She asks him to write a letter and bring it with him. There, she unveils a time capsule where their letters will go inside and be buried next to a tree on a mountain for two years. In two years, they shall meet again to read the letters. Having established that she does not intend for them to see each other again until that two years is up, they separate and go their own ways.
Gyeon-woo finds himself on the mountain two years later but the Girl does not show. Depressed, he opens the time capsule and is startled when a frog jumps out of it. He proceeds to read the letter and learns the root of her angst and behavior. The Girl had a boyfriend who she was madly in love with and who did everything she ever wanted and more. Like Gyeon-woo, he brought her a rose on their 100th day and like Gyeon-woo, met her on the train. She was happy and content, planning their lives together under that very tree and taking long walks in the sunset next to the lake. His sudden death left her heartbroken. In remembrance of the tragic event, she and his mother make a trip each year to the lake where he drowned. She also says that her deceased boyfriend's mother has been encouraging her to move on with her life and even tried to introduce guys to her but she wasn't ready.
Time passed without her feeling any better, still tortured by her lost love. Meeting Gyeon-woo only made her feel worse because he reminded her of her lost love and he treated her just as well which made her develop feelings for him (which caused conflicts within herself, as she was still mourning for her deceased boyfriend). She finally decided that she needed to get away in order for her to complete her mourning and move on, and that if she and Gyeong-woo are really meant to be together, fate shall bring them back together.
One year after Gyeon-woo visits the tree, the Girl finally comes. Sitting under the tree is an old man. Throughout their conversation, the old man is very interested in finding out why the Girl was one year late.(1) After the old man tells the Girl the touching story how the tree was struck down by lightening only to have another tree planted in its place by a young man who said there was someone who would be very sad to find that the tree had been destroyed, the old man disappears and the Girl looks at the sky to see a tiny UFO flying across the sky and then vanishing.(2)
In the final scene, Gyeon-woo finally has agreed to visit his aunt and meet this girl that his aunt has been talking about and she turns out to be none other than the Girl. The Girl's deceased boyfriend's mother is actually Gyeon-Woo's aunt. The movie ends with them out clubbing together, implying that they have moved past their issues and are a happy couple now.
(1) It is implied in the movie that old man is the Gyeon-woo from the future. Some speculation on why the future Gyeon-woo wants to find out why the Girl was one year late: The Girl and Gyeon-woo got married in the end, but the Girl still refuses to tell him why she was one year late. Or, the Girl broke up with Gyeon-woo again and he never found out why she was one year late. Throughout the movie, the relationship between Gyeon-woo and the Girl is an on-off bittersweet affair.
(2) The Girl had mentioned a few times that she wished to meet someone from the future. Her wish is granted by the old Gyeon-Woo (the old man under the tree) from the future. After her encounter with the UFO, she proceeds to the place where her ex-boyfriend died from drowning. In a deleted scene from the director's cut, she throws the necklace into the sea. This symbolizes that she finally has closure.
[edit] Interesting Facts
There are several easter eggs throughout the movie that can be accessed through a secret menu.
On the wall of the motel is an article about a set of quintuplets. Each of the five quintuplets has a cameo appearance somewhere in the film (two as the motel worker, one as the gangster boss in jail, one as the security guard at the Girl's college (not shown), and one as a security monitor in the subway control room). Gyeon-Woo meets all the five quintuplets unknowingly throughout the movie.
A small UFO appears in the sky near the end of the film, in the scene wherein the female protagonist speaks with the old man under a tree. As the same old man also appears in the subway train scene when the two protagonists meet for the first time, and time travel is a theme in both the girl's movie scripts and in the conversations between the two leads. This can be confirmed in the director's commentary on the Korean version of the 2-discs DVD. Also, the old man and Gyeon-Woo (at the end of the movie) share the same line of "building a bridge of chance for the one you love".
In the movie, Gyeon-Woo visits the tree 2 years later as promised, but the Girl was not there because she still can't forget the memories of her dead ex-boyfriend. Since she did not turn up, he proceeds to dig out the time capsule buried (two years ago) deep in the soil. To his surprise, he found a frog living inside the time capsule. The explanation is that the Girl from the future came back in a time machine (referring again to the theme of time travel) and placed the frog in the time capsule to play a prank on Gyeon-Woo. Another and more likely explanation is that the old man (perhaps representing Gyeon-Woo's future) was the one reading the letter in the time capsule and possibly placed the frog in it.
The runaway soldier in the theme park shares the same birthday date as the female lead (you also hear about the runaway soldier being reported on the news, through the television playing in the background of the scene where Gyeon-Woo is eating with his friends, right after he accidentally tries to "pick-up" on the girl).
One of the scenes shown during the sequence when Gyeon-Woo is reading The Girl's letter shows The Girl in the coffee shop touching her ex-boyfriend's hand and is shown ordering a soda. (Throughout the film, whenever Gyeon-Woo tries to order soda, The Girl changes it to coffee.)
The transvestite girl Gyeon-Woo meets when he and The Girl are broken up appears earlier in the film, sitting next to The Girl on the subway scene where The Girl brings the forgotten package to the grandmother.
The name of the female lead character is not told in the movie, she is only referred to as "The Girl". In part two, "The Girl" asks Gyeon-Woo to read another of her scripts. This is a martial arts story. In this story, the villain has the name "Gyeon-Woo". After the fight sequence, the narrator says that the heroine goes onto become King Jung-jo. Thus, some might assume that the name of the girl in the movie is Jung-jo.
