My Sassy Girl is a 2001 South Korean romantic comedy film. It is partially based on the true story told in a series of love letters written by a man who posted them online.

The film was very successful in South Korea. When My Sassy Girl was released throughout East Asia, it became a blockbuster hit in the entire region, from Japan to Taiwan to Hong Kong, to the point where it was drawing comparisons to Titanic. Through positive word-of-mouth, the movie eventually became one of the most popular South Korean films among Asian-Americans in the United States.

Plot

It tells the story of a male college student (Cha Tae-Hyun ) and a girl (Jun Ji-Hyun) whose name is never given. Our male protagonist, Gyeon-woo, does not seem to be able to catch a break. His romantic prospects are so pathetic that even his mother tries to get into the act, telling him to go visit his aunt so he can get hooked up with a girl. Gyeon-woo has more pride than that so he refuses. He goes to the train station for a ride home. This is where he sees the Girl, stone drunk and standing precariously close to the edge of the train. He pulls her to safety just in time. She does not seem very appreciative.

Inside the train, Gyeon-woo cannot help but stare at this girl (who he is slightly attracted to but repulsed by her drunkeness) who wavers back and forth. Finally, she throws up on an old man, calls Gyeon-woo "honey" and drops like a sack of potatoes. Gyeon-woo, confused, carries her all the way to the nearest motel. While he is showering, her phone rings and he answers it, foolishly informing the person on the other end where he is, and is soon received by a pair of police officers. A short struggle later, he is taken to jail.

He eventually gets out but that morning the Girl calls him out to a cafe, where he spills to her the entire story of the night before. She seemed somewhat irritated by this and drags Gyeon-woo off to a bar, where she gets hammered again, resulting yet another trip to the same exact motel. Being more intelligent this time, Gyeon-woo does not take a shower.

The Girl is a fierce character. After this second overnight stay at the motel, she seeks Gyeon-woo out at class. Faced with a old and fiesty teacher, she succeeds in getting him out of class by claiming to be on the way to an abortion, with him being the father. Her plan a succes, she takes Gyeon-woo to the theme park to enjoy themselves.

She is an aspiring scriptwriter, giving Gyeon-woo three different looks at genres. The first is an action movie - the Demolition Terminator - which switches gender roles, symbolically having the Girl save her helpless lover (Gyeon-woo). The second is a wild perversion of Gyeon-woo's beloved melodramas (the Girl, having died, asks that her lover be buried along with her, even alive. The resulting situation is quite humorous.) and the third is a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon spoof. All three feature the same common thread, the Girl is from the future.

Despite all the horrible things Gyeon-woo endures, he is determined to stick with the Girl. He feels a pain inside her and wants to ease it. So no matter what happens, he bites his tongue and trudges on. Throughout the first half of the movie, she is resolute in her pain, dishing it out plenty. But as the second half comes around, she begins to change. More of her vulnerability is apparent.

The second - and the more touching - half of the movie begins with the Girl waiting for Gyeon-woo after school lets out. She takes him out to the park and suddenly complains about the pain her high heels are causing her. In the subsequent conversation, she convinces Gyeon-woo to switch shoes with her. Overjoyed, she tells him to chase her around the park and which he does until it starts raining. They walk to her house where Gyeon-woo meets her parents, after which he overhears a massive argument between the Girl and her mother. Gyeon-woo does not hear from her for a long time.

For their 100th day, she calls him and asks him to bring her a rose during class. He does this, leading to a touching and romantic scene where he follows the beautiful music of Pachelbel to where her location. But the night unfolds further and again he is faced with her parents, the Girl herself unconscious for the third time. Her father, infuriated, orchestrates a break up.

By now, Gyeon-woo has stayed with the Girl too long not to realize how special she is. Having given so much to her to ease her pain, he is unwilling to let her go. So this is why, upon being summoned to scout her date, he is disheartened to be labeled as a mere friend. Broken, he leaves the date with 10 rules one must follow to make the Girl happy, before leaving. Unbeknownst to Gyeon-woo, the Girl hears these 10 rules and rushes to find him. They meet once again in the train station and find themselves standing at an intersection between friendship and something more.

She asks him to write a letter and bring it with him. There, she unveils a time capsule where their letters shall go inside and be buried next to a tree on a mountain for two years. In two years, they shall meet again to read the letters. And with that, they separate.

Gyeon-woo finds himself on the mountain in two years but does not find her there with him. Depressed, he opens the time capsule, finds a frog inside, and takes out her letter to read. The Girl had a boyfriend at first, who did everything she ever wanted and more. Like Gyeon-woo, he brought her a rose on their 100th day and like Gyeon-woo, met her on the train. She was happy and content, planning their lives together under the very tree and taking long walks in the sunset next to the lake. His sudden death left her heartbroken. A year passes without her feeling any better, tortured by her lost love. Meeting Gyeon-woo only makes her feel worse because all the things she does to him causes her to fall more and more for him. And the memories in her heart cannot let her go. She finally concludes that if they are really meant to be together, fate shall bring them back.

Guess what? It did.

Review

My Sassy Girl is a unique movie because it breaks traditional classification lines. One cannot call it just a comedy because the entire second half of the movie features little of the such. One cannot call it a drama because it is so irreverent at first. The movie is a reflection of the real world, which itself see saws between cheerful and morose moments often.

Subplots are balanced well and dispersed like bread crumbs. My Sassy Girl's twists and various folds of its plot go back on itself. Things that seem insignificant are given time to grow and mature to become players in the story. Nothing is given movie time for just camera fodder.

Easter eggs

There are several Easter eggs throughout the movie.

A small UFO appears on the screen near the end of the film, in the scene wherin the female protagonist speaks with the old man. As the same old man also appears near the beginning of the film when the two protagonists meet, and as time travel is a theme in both the girl's movie scripts and in the conversations between the two leads, this has led some watchers of the movie to speculate that the old man is the male protagonist from the future, come back to revisit his past. This can be confirmed in the director's commentary on the Korean version of the DVD.

On the wall of the hotel is an article about a set of quintuplets. Each of the four quintuplets has a cameo somewhere in the film.

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