MY SASSY GIRL · 엽기적인그녀

Some things take you by surprise. Sure, I’d heard about My Sassy Girl before – it’s South Korea’s highest-grossing comedy of all time, and if ever there was a Korean movie that non-Koreans I spoke to knew something about, this would be it. So, having been released in 2001, why did it take me all of seven years to finally catch up with it? I’m not sure. The important thing is that I did, and it took me by surprise.

I’m usually one not easily warmed by romantic comedies. But this one was different. My Sassy Girl tells the story of Gyeon-woo (Cha Tae-hyun), a male college student who meets a girl (Jun Ji-hyun) one fateful night on the subway. Their first encounter is a memorable one and establishes their characters succinctly – he’s a hopeless romantic, honest in his appreciation of women, yet genuinely likeable, kind and obliging (almost to a fault); she’s almost certainly an alcoholic sociopath. Whereas the girl is physically Gyeon-woo’s type (and, let’s face it, I doubt he’s alone), her drunkenness turns him off almost immediately. But her inner suffering, which quickly becomes apparent, ignites a resolve in him to heal her pain.

I won’t go into too much detail as to what happens next, or how it happens, as that would be doing the uninitiated a grave disservice, but it may be worthwhile to mention that whilst many of the ensuing shenanigans may leave you shaking your head in disbelief, it’s actually based on a true story.  This film has its origins in a novel by Kim Ho-sik, which in turn came from a series of Internet postings by the same guy, chronicling the antics of his clearly bonkers college girlfriend.

Throwing the everyday guy in with the wacky girl and seeing what happens is a staple approach of the romantic comedy genre, so there’s no surprises here in that sense. So what sets My Sassy Girl apart? It’s the sudden, unexpected bursts of comic violence. It’s director Kwak Jae-yong’s deft ability to hop gleefully from one sub-genre to the next without, for want of a better term, losing the plot. It’s the minimal, yet quirky cast of supporting characters that never, ever get in the way. It’s Cha Tae-hyun’s perfectly pained facial expressions and Jun Ji-hyun’s show-stealing and arguably more challenging performance as his enigmatic, temperamental girlfriend. It’s seeing grand romantic gestures play out in a  country where they still mean something. It’s the delicious twist at the end, which would normally send your eyeballs rolling if you weren’t too busy marveling at how all the dots you didn’t even know were there just magically connected to form something you can’t help but smile at.

But more than anything, it’s the respect the writers have shown for the power of things left unsaid. The most poetic example? The girl is never named. It is in this regard that My Sassy Girl draws its biggest difference from its Hollywood counterparts. The film contains hardly any dialogue between the leads and supporting characters trying to figure each other out, it does not tirelessly tread down every possible avenue of enquiry exploring the motives and subtext of what has been done and said to the extent that there is literally nothing left for the viewer to discover and think about on his own. The relationship between Gyeon-woo and the girl is fascinating enough to sustain interest over the film’s epic 2hr 17min running time because it is organic – it grows and twists and blossoms and tumbles in ways that these things can only do when you’re not looking at them.

And when motives are finally exposed and pieces start falling into place, the pay-off is greater for the fact that you didn’t feel like you weathered a patronising brainstorm to get there.

So do yourself a favour. If you haven’t checked this gem out already, get your hands on a copy and a couple of spare hours. It’s long, yes, perhaps too long for this kind of film, but it never leads to frustration, and regardless of whether you’re a fan or cynic of the romantic comedy genre, you may be surprised at how you feel by the end.

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My Sassy Girl (Wikipedia)

An aside. Having mingled with a few Koreans in the past, I found it highly amusing that throughout the course of the film, I was constantly reminded of the common mannerisms and favourite quips they all seemed to share. I often wondered why the phrase “Wanna die?” was so popular, or if throwing pretend punches and slaps at each other was something encoded in the national DNA. Now I have a better idea. It seems to me now that almost every young Korean I’d met had, at some point, acted out a part of this film. There is an element of Jun Ji-hyun’s character in almost every Korean girl I’ve met, for instance, sometimes (though thankfully not always) to the point where I’m not sure who is mirroring who. The same can be said for the reputation of some Korean guys who dote to romantic excess on their girls. Anyone with any further insight into this is invited to share their thoughts.