Review | Busan 2022: 20th Century Girl movie review – Netflix Korean romantic comedy starring Kim Yoo-jung is a heartwarming tale of youthful errors
- While her best friend Yeon-doo (Roh Yoon-seo) is away, high-school girl Bo-ra (Kim Yoo-jung) is tasked by Yeon-doo with finding out all she can about a boy
- Things don’t go at all to plan, and much humour and heartbreak follows. Kim dazzles as Bo-ra in a film where the female characters are the more memorable
3/5 stars
Bursting with youthful exuberance and cataclysmic heartache, it follows the wilful yet well-meaning Bo-ra (Kim), whose efforts to research a potential love interest for her best friend backfire in the most spectacular fashion.
Byeon Woo-seok, Park Jung-woo and Roh Yoon-seo also star, but all are sidelined by Kim’s dazzling central turn.
Bo-ra and Yeon-doo (Roh) have been best friends forever, but just as they are about to transition from an all-girls school to a new coed academy, Yeon-doo is shipped off to the United States for a life-saving heart operation.
While she is away, Bo-ra is tasked with finding out everything she can about Hyun-jin (Park), a classmate that Yeon-doo had a brief interaction with before she left.
Always willing to help her ailing BFF, Bo-ra determines to befriend Hyun-jin’s buddy Woon-ho (Byeon), and milk him for information. Inevitably, she starts to develop feelings for Woon-ho, only for Hyun-jin to ask Bo-ra out.
Things just go from bad to worse for Bo-ra, and much of the film’s humour and subsequent heartbreak arises from her gung-ho approach to life, barrelling into situations with a cocksure attitude that always seems to get her into trouble.
Her presence also sets Hyun-jin and Woon-ho at loggerheads, as they both vie for Bo-ra’s attentions. Nothing, however, can prepare them for what awaits them upon Yeon-doo’s return.
Bang ensures that the female characters are far more memorable than the men in her film. While Hyun-jin and Woon-ho are both handsome, neither seems worthy of keeping up with Bo-ra’s relentless firecracker.
Athletic and proficient in taekwondo, she is also physically stronger than her suitors, at one point besting a local gangster while the boys can only stand by trembling.
Unfortunately, the film employs a present-day framing device starring Han Hyo-joo as a melancholic adult Bo-ra, who wistfully recollects how assertive and happy she used to be.
This extended epilogue, which gives the film a heavy-handed and wholly unnecessary tragic coda, somewhat takes the wind out of the sails of what is for the most part a genuinely heartwarming comedy of youthful errors.
20th Century Girl will start streaming on Netflix on October 21.
