A combination of first love and the 90s, Doubling the sense of freshness.
The 20th Century Girl is a Korean Youth film released on Netflix in October 2022. It attained the feat of ranking second in the world of Netflix viewing time on October 26.
Beginning story
‘Bora’, a 17-year-old high school girl who deem friendship significant over love, in 1999.
“Yeon-doo”, Bora’s best friend, must leave to foreign country for a while for heart surgery, but it is hard for her to take the footstep to depart. Yeon-doo, who fell in love with a man she met in coincidence, is devastated by the fact that she must leave her first love to go to foreign country. Bora reassures Yeon-doo and promises that she will observe her first love and deliver news every day.
Bora persistently observes Yeon-doo’s first love, Baek Hyun-Jin, and discovers his height, foot size, and hobbies. Furthermore, she approaches and targets Hyun Jin’s friend, “Poong Woon-ho”, that is with him all day to discover everything about Hyun Jin. However, the plan keeps going awry and an unexpected love is approaching Bora as well...!
Review
This movie is a youth film featuring high school students and it effectively captivates fresh, pure, and lively emotions. Specifically, the sense of purity doubles as the setting is in the 90s (1999 to be exact). The storyline was also fully composed with depicting more extensive scope of relationship rather than the mere love triangle and with repeated twists from misunderstanding and delusion.
The things that are missing is that the pain of the main character is relatively difficult to convey. The cheerfulness and pureness are sufficient, however, the pain of love and the anguish between friendship and love is insufficiently conveyed. Although such senses are exhibited through the main character’s shed and burst of tears, I believe there should have been more detailed directing and description of the situation.
Moreover, the lack of probability on the second half of the movie could have been done better. There are events that appears without any specific foreshadowing for the development of the story. Such reasoning explains the ending, and this is the part that was most missing.
Best Scene
The scene where the male main character confesses to the woman at the amusement park was impressive. It was the confession almost putting his life(?) on stake and it gave the sense of spirit, energy, and unspoiled purity of youth.
Extra story
The video that Bora lends to Woon-ho is the 1998 Korean film ‘An Affair’. It is an adult melodrama starring Lee Jung-jae, the main character of the drama ‘Squid Game’, and it was a hot topic in Korea at the time.
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