Awwwww…

Today’s borrowed film was a Korean romantic comedy called My Sassy Girl.

The short version is that it is sweet enough to kill a diabetic.

The long version:

It was a fun film. I don’t know if I’d ever list it on my all time favorites, but there was a sweetness and lightness to it that made it very watchable. I really enjoyed it in a shameful, eat-too-much-chocolate sort of way. There were a few moments that threatened to spill over into nausea inducing sweetness, but those moments were few and far between, and my only major complaint about the movie was how it manage to avoid so many Hollywood romantic-comedy elements throughout the film, only to fumble right at the very end, when it was most important to keep up their philosophy. Oh well…

I wish I could understand Korean so I could go through the extras disc. One of the things I’m really curious about is whether this movie is shot on film or digital video. I’ve seen what you can do if you toggle frame rates and go through a particular kind of image treatment in editing with video. If you do it right, it makes for a very passable 16mm style image. And this movie does look like it was shot on 16mm. However, during some of their “fast-forward” moments where the image is sped, up it suddenly looks very much like video once the frame rate’s been increased. That could either just be an artifact of film digitally converted to the AVID editing systems when they cut the film, or it could genuinely be that they did a good job of shooting on video that was only betrayed by the frame rate at faster speeds. I wouldn’t be surprised; a lot of film makers here are turning to digital as a way to save costs on shoots, and for the most part it works.

The Story

Kyun-Woo is a well meaning guy who is a bit of a bumbler, essentially clueless and prone to confusion as well as getting kicked around. One night he saves a drunken girl from nearly falling off the subway platform and into the train and after watching her throw up on people on the train, reluctantly takes care of her for the night. Later he finds out that she’s a sadistic, furious, she-devil of a woman who is basically also a decent soul, but wounded and pyschotic in a playful, scary sort of way. They become friends and then the pain begins…

The Soapbox

Watching this movie has pretty much nailed down for me something that’s been brewing in the back of my mind for the last few years since I got exposed to more Asian cinema. Particularly in the area of romance films. I think the biggest difference between the Asian notion of a romantic film and the Western (More to the point, the Hollywood) notion is that of restraint and subtlety. The typical Hollywood romance is passionate and sometimes even hysterical in its emotional excesses. There are tears, screaming, broken furniture, the obligatory song by Hot Female Singer Of The Month, and some kind of life affirming, quasi or full blown Happy Ending that tells us Love Conquers All. The Asian approach seems to be:

1) Love is beautiful, but it is not always a happy or cheerful thing.

2) Subtlety is King

3) There is more drama and genuine romance in a painfully restrained look, or an aborted attempt at physical contact than there is in a sex scene.

That’s probably just the Asian cultural mindset at work, but as Asians generally seem to view emotional displays as unsightly and unpleasant, their love stories tend to be much more tightly controlled, hinting at raging passions within rather than outright showing them. Somehow this implication of passion tends to be more dramatic for me than the lung bursting, bellowing hysterics of Hollywood romances where you have to have tears shed at the 45 minute mark, and again at the 90 minute mark.

Or maybe it’s just a matter of age. Hollywood has been at this for decades now. And they’ve morphed into very cagey, very greedy business entities that, like any good Multinational Corporation, looks at annual earnings rather than artistic achievement or human value. As a result, you hardly get the dialogue heavy, witty exchanges of, say, Hepburn, Grant and Stewart from 1940′s The Philadelphia Story anymore. Romantic films have been thoroughly researched, focus-grouped, and statistically collated, the end result being that the People have deicided the perfect romantic film is… Maid In Manhattan.

Urgh.

On the other side of the Pacific, you have films like this, and my really BIG favorite in Asian romantic cinema, Japan’s Love Letter, which again follows the Asian formula of unspoken feelings, bristling passion kept in check and… somehow… a sweetness and sentiment that actually feels genuine rather than stuck in because, “Girls like that stuff.” You get the idea the director likes that stuff too, that maybe he or she was trying not to cry as this piece of him/herself, a secret wish, or an old memory, played out once more and was captured on film.

Maybe it’s because it’s new. This kind of quality in both film and technology is relatively new to the Asian filmmakers and so there’s an enthusiasm and an energy here I rarely find in Hollywood efforts anymore. You almost feel like everyday that these people went to work, they were grinning from ear to ear thinking, “Holy shit. We’re making a real movie!” rather than sitting down at Spagos to wearily discuss percentages and contracts for performers before going to meet the marketing people to discuss the ad campaign. They still believe in what they’re doing, I think. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

I guess it all falls back on cliches. Hollywood doesn’t have its heart in it anymore. Asian romantic films, in their restrained and subtle way, still very much do. And the one thing I really admire is that when the emotional excess finally does happen, when the tears come out, you (Or at least, I) feel like there’s a catharsis going on too. That unconsciously you’ve been holding your feelings back and finally they get to gush out along with the characters. In that sense, the emotional payoff is much larger and more intense.

This is not to say that I’m turning my back on Western cinema. I still think The English Patient and Moulin Rouge are some of the all time best love movies ever made. But I am finding a novelty and appreciation for this more low-key stuff that I don’t often see anymore.

And for now, I like it.

I really, REALLY like it…