My Sassy Cyborg

A lot of you probably remember the 2001 romantic movie My Sassy Girl (and hopefully not the recent disaster of a Hollywood remake.) Although the film tended to meander in places, it was funny, fresh, and very romantic in its own way.

The film had this magic that made it one of the bigger box office draws in Asia, and one of the triggers of the Korean Wave that spread out in the 2000s. To say it was because of the formidable chemistry between the two leads, the story itself, the comedy, or the melodramatic latter half that would become a staple of later Korean romantic comedies, one could not truly say. But director Kwak jae-yong would then try to recapture lightning in a bottle using all the elements I described, with varying results.

One of his latter efforts, My Girlfriend is a Cyborg (Cyborg She being the alternate title) heavily borrows from a plot within a plot in My Sassy Girl - there is some similarity between the plot of this film and one of the scripts the Girl writes.

But (luckily?) unlike the mishmash of the script that was in My Sassy Girl, this film manages to tighten up the story and focus on the love story without deviating too much from anything else. After 8 years of trying, Kwak Jae-yong is perfecting his storytelling technique. Does it measure up to the original film? And, does it stand up as its own film?

Jiro (Keisuke Koide) is a single college student who is celebrating his birthday. As it happens, he comes across a very eccentric but lively girl (Haruka Ayase) where Jiro has the time of his life. Unfortunately, she disappears as the night ends. Jiro then resigns himself to the normal life until a year later when someone who looks exactly like that one girl (Also Haruka Ayase) arrives. but this time, she's a cyborg from the future. Apparently she's been sent by Jiro's future self to prevent certain things from happening to him. At the same time, Jiro has to teach her what it means to be human.

The success of a movie like this depends largely on the chemistry between the two actors. Keisuke Koide, who has a lot of TV and movie experience, is a perfect choice for a male lead in a MSG-esque film; like most of the other male protagonists in Kwak's films, Jiro is a lonely twentysomething, an everyman we can all easily sympathize with, continuously weirded out but endlessly patient towards the girl. Haruka Ayase, who has found herself among Japan's rising stars in acting, does an effective performance as the nameless Girl, having to go through a spectrum of emotions (and non-emotions) as she transforms from emotionless cyborg to cyborg with a heart. Her impulsiveness in the first few minutes almost reminds me of Jun Ji-hyun when she starred in My Sassy Girl, with its own flavor. Indeed, 2008 was Ayase's year, having starring roles in four films in such a short period.

Despite being a Japanese film starring Japanese actors, Kwak's message shines through the film, proving that his story transcends cultural barriers. While it does borrow a lot of elements from his previous films, his style gets more polished as time goes on. It also lays off some elements that might be considered cliche after years of repetition: the melodrama doesn't really weigh as heavily as the other films (which feels weird considering the scope of the second to last act of the film.) With it goes some of the sentimentality that made the original film so fun to watch, but at the same time your dose of warm and fuzzy will probably come with the last act that brings a final twist to the story that comes mostly unexpected and brings the film to a circular sense of closure.

And I guess avoiding cliches is one of the points of this article: after this movie, will Kwak try the same formula again? And how long will it be before even the freshest-looking rehash of his landmark film starts to become stale?

In any case, this film is a very enjoyable film in itself, and should be enjoyed as is. It's not perfect, but it's a very polished version of a story that Kwak Jae-yong has been trying to tell us for the past decade. Go out and give it a try.