-->

Add

20th century girl - Korean film review

20th century girl - Korean film review

 Sentimental rom-com 20th Century Girl, set in late 1990s South Korea, offers local audiences a generous helping of nostalgia while also feeding westerners' growing appetite for content from the country brought to them by BTS and Squid Game to be delivered . .” Director Bang Woo-ri's feature debut follows a 17-year-old girl as she navigates her life-changing first love and the complexities of female friendships, joining the series of  Korean love stories on the big and small screen,, the "Architecture 101 " and "Twenty-Five and Twenty-One". The coming-of-age film, available worldwide on Netflix,  offers a memorable study of how teenage mistakes, however silly or trivial, can define our lives.



It begins with 17-year-old Bo-ra (Kim You-Jung) saying goodbye to her best friend Yeon-doo (Noh Yoon-Seo) as she heads to the United States for major heart surgery undergo. During their breakup, Bo-ra is asked to find out all about her friend Hyun-jin's (Park Jung-woo) crush,  a sassy and popular classmate whom Yeon-doo had an affair with before she left.

 Fiercely loyal to her ailing boyfriend, Bo-ra employs creative, if sometimes silly, tactics to learn more about Hyun-jin, diligently emailing anything she finds out, from his shoe size to his home address, from his best friend to Yeon-doo. But things take an unexpected turn. It all changes when Bo-ra realizes for the first time in her life that she is falling in love with a boy: Woon-ho (Byeon Woo-Seok), Hyun-jin's closest and most considerate friend.

 When Yeon-doo finally returns, Bo-ra is hardly prepared for what lies ahead. The film is loosely based on director Bang's own experiences growing up with her high school friends in Cheongju, a relatively quiet city in central Korea. Bang captures the feeling of devoted teenage friendships and the joys of sharing intimacy with other girls while acknowledging how, despite genuine efforts to maintain them, they must inevitably change over time. Kim You-Jung is simultaneously compelling and charming Bo-ra, who in many seemingly insignificant but occasionally heartbreaking moments has yet to realize the significance of what is going on. While the film says very little about the person Bo-ra (played in the presence of Han Hyo-Joo, who is also from Cheongju in real life) grew up to be, it shows that his career choices were determined by what Woon-ho once said to him in a foolish moment about two decades ago. 



The film is complemented by signs from the '90s, including VHS tapes, pagers, and public payphones, while certain scenes evoke memories of some of the era's most iconic K-pop videos and TV dramas, including 'In Summer" by Deux. Bo-ra's father runs a video rental company that shows a comedic scene in which she is caught at school with a copy of "An Affair," a 1998 R-rated erotic drama starring Bo-ra. Lee Jung-Jae and they force her. to keep him in custody. 

The way things end may not be popular or compelling to some, as the film surprisingly leaves some of its key characters unexplored despite its two-hour runtime. Some critical conflicts are resolved rather abruptly and possibly too easily. Not yet realizing its full potential, 20th Century Girl manages to expand on the time-honored theme of first love by delivering a moving exploration of what makes certain moments - and certain people - unforgettable.


0 Response to "20th century girl - Korean film review"

Post a Comment

Add

Add