My Sassy Girl

I saw the movie My Sassy Girl long ago. It was extremely popular in Korea, Japan and China when it first came out. There were lots and lots of girls who were crazy about the story, and the Jun Ji-hyun’s style became what thousands of girls follow after. The movie is no doubt a classical one and probably every teenager in these countries is very familiar with the piece “I believe” which is the theme music. There is also a popular joke: “whenever your auntie introduces you to a girl friend, just go!” This may reveal the popularity of the movie in Asian countries.

The movie is an unpredictable and enjoyable love story which differs a lot from the traditional. The first encounter of the guy and the girl is anything but a pleasant experience. The drunken girl uses rude language, throws up on an old man and passes out in the public. It is the nerdy guy who has to take care of her. As the story goes on, the guy slowly finds out how crazy and abusive this girl is, but, interestingly, everything works out. The guy falls in love with her and does all the crazy things to please her. Even if the guy suffers physically and mentally, he really thinks that this beautiful girl have some sorrow in her and he really wants to help her to get better.

The ending of the story when the guy and his sassy girl meet again in his auntie’s house is an obvious symbol of the karma. That’s something I have discussed in my article on Train Man, but there are more things we can learn from this movie. I find the way people express themselves in eastern countries varies from the west. You seldom hear the three words “I love you” in an Asian movie while that’s probably what you hear throughout a movie in the west. I think this is due to the context of our language, because the language used in Asian countries like Korea and Japan is of high context, which means people prefer to express themselves in a more indirect way. However, the western language, say English, is low in context and this means they speak out what comes into their minds in a direct manner. For instance, the first thing I came to America is to learn to say no, because saying no in eastern culture is concerned rude. So far as I know, Japan has more than twenty ways to say something that means a “no”, and it is much the same in China. Culture may cause variances, but I think that’s not a problem for us to communicate with one another.