First a word on editions: the longest, "director's" cut of this film runs approximately 137 minutes, and that's the version I purchased through this site, manufactured by Bonzai Media Corporation - apparently unavailable at the moment - though my Amazon Verified Purchase shows the PRP version. I've only seen the DC and not the shorter version; it's hard to ascertain which is which with this title given that there are American, Taiwanese, Japanese and Korean DVDs available and not all of them have adequate details listed. So look carefully at all the options - which may change frequently.
The story:
A somewhat geeky engineering student, Gyeon-woo (Cha Tae-hyun) encounters a drunk and obnoxious, never-named girl (Jun Ji-hyun) on a commuter train and through his combined feelings of responsibility, passivity, and (surprisingly low-key) lust ends up becoming her savior, protector, and eventually a sort of boyfriend. She remains dominant and domineering, rude, and thoughtless through much of the film, though even early on it rarely seems that she's outright cruel - just immature and perhaps somewhat spoiled (confirmed when we find out that her family is clearly wealthier and of a higher class than Gyeon-woo's clearly middle-class roots). Will she ever treat him right? Will he grow a spine? This is the stuff of every romantic comedy ever.
But "My Sassy Girl" is not every romantic comedy ever. The spectacular performances from the two leads, a remarkable sense of pacing (despite the film running almost 2 1/2 hours there's not a moment where it lags), and the consistent inventiveness of director/coscreenwriter Kwak in taking us all over the map emotionally (and all over the map from urban to suburban to countryside and back again) give us in the end two of the most memorable characters in a "chick flick" that I've ever seen. I've seen quite a few Korean films but this probably makes the best use of Seoul as a location in my viewing experience, and in fact it's one of the best "city films" I've seen, with a real feel for the milieu - subways, restaurants, natural areas, a couple of quite distinctive residential neighborhoods, and an amusement park, among other places. And there are all the fantasy sequences that the would be writer "girl" dreams up, which take us to a whole other range of places.
While the wonderful range of locations and dream-fantasies adds vibrancy to the film, this is at heart the story of any couple of young people struggling with maturity, with the palette of emotions and situations here is much broader, and the storyline meanders in much more unusual directions than most. If you're impatient, or require more "realism" or more conventionally likable characters, you may not be enthralled as I was; and if you've not encountered the Korean penchant for melodrama, which intrudes at various points in the narrative and largely takes over in it's last quarter...well, don't say I didn't warn you.
So I warned you. But this is my review, and so I'll end it by saying: likely the best romantic comedy of the past 25 years.
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Technical Details
I'll skip the plot review and just give the technical specifications.Audio: Korean AC-3 5.1 or dts 5.1, Cantonese (dubbed) AC-3 5.1Subtitles: English, Chinese
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