The original My Sassy Girl released in 2001, is a Korean romance about an average Joe who chances upon a drunken girl (Gianna Jun) on a train. At first Kyun-Woo (Cha Tae Hyun) is embarrassed by her behaviour but a series of events leads him to taking care of her. He finds that each day with her ends differently, and he even gets jailed by mistake! Though she teases him in a million ways, Kyun-Woo finds himself drawn to healing her pain, and begins to feel proud with her. The storyline reads like a soppy tale, but this film’s quirky comedy brings it a step closer to romantic cult classic When Harry Met Sally, with an ending that hits deep. In fact, My Sassy Girl did so well in Korea and Asia, that a Hollywood remake of the same title was released in 2008, starring Elisha Cuthbert.
Romance Comic Strip Style
My Sassy Girl keeps a blog entry feel, since it is based on Kim Ho-Sik’s Internet letters. First of a romantic trilogy, My Sassy Girl plays like a collection of encounters between Kyun-Woo and The Girl (Gianna Jun). Perhaps the style mirrors Kyun-Woo’s fantasy girl, who comes from his favorite ‘romance comic strips’. After she throws up in a train, Kyun-Woo takes her to a motel but is mistaken for kidnapping her, and ends up in jail. When he next sees her, she is sober but more of an enigma than ever. And so the film documents all their crazy adventures together –how she throws him into the water, forces him to wear heels and saves him from a soldier deserter. As she loves scriptwriting, she also pushes Kyun-Woo to read her scripts. Woven between these mad vignettes are scenes from her imagined scripts. In these scenes, both play Terminators, Samurai or lovers in Hwang Sun-Won’s novel Shower. These fragments seem haphazard but give a real-life feel to this true story.
