My Sassy Girl, A Short Analysis

My Sassy Girl was an entertaining film that could best be described as a romantic comedy or a melodrama. Most of the humor was provided by the reversal of traditional South Korean roles, i.e. The Girl was bossing around Gyun-woo, without any respect to his seniority. Gyun-woo seems to resent his position, but after a time, he accepts his more subservient position, out of love and his desire to "cure" her sorrow. Towards the end of the film, the girl shows that deep down she is a traditional girl, who has just fallen on hard times. In one article discussing the advent of trans-cinema and rise of South Korean feminism, the author mentions the postmodern Korea and how it references the pre-modern. Examples include calling one group of people the Orange Tribe and another the Yata Tribe. The connotation of a tribe dates back to feudal Korea, while the people belonging to these tribes are anything but. Thus, the postmodern is referencing the pre-modern.
How this relates to the movie though, is best represented by the girl who is very postmodern and feministic (in that she is a strong female character), but deep down she is very pre-modern. This was probably the director's choice to show a strong, female lead, but to not embrace the concept wholeheartedly. Possibly, this represents South Korea's influx of feminists and the country's allowing and then subsequently banning feminist film festivals. The country seems to be trying cope with the feminists, but without giving up the traditional heritage, which seems to lead to the feminists (and other minorities such as the homosexuals, youth culture, etc) being snuffed out in the end.
It is also interesting to note that the girl's house is much more modern looking than Gyun-woo's. While Gyun-woo's home contains the hardwood floor and paper walls, the girl's house has a wrought iron fence overrun with some-kind of vine and the interior of her house seems much more Western. Again, this could be a subtle hint at the changing and Westernizing of Korea.
Hmm...seems I wrote a little more than the required 250 words, but I feel this movie, more than others I have seen shows how a country is changing and adapting in various ways.
-Julian