…THE PLOT is simple enough
— Adult Na Bo-ra (an excellent but underused
Han Hyo-joo) receives a package in the mail
that makes her reminisce about its contents
and their story. The years flash back to
1999, when her best friend Kim Yeon-doo
(played by newbie Roh Yoon-seo) did not want
to miss out on getting to know the cute boy
she met right before she was due for a heart
surgery. Enter teenage Bo-ra (played by the
delightful Kim Yoo-jung), who is ready to
glean every ounce of information she can
about Baek Hyun-jin (Park Jung-woo) for her
friend. In the process, she also meets
Hyun-jin’s best friend Poong Woon-ho (Byeon
Woo-seok), and YouthTM ensues.
Kim Yoo-jung is lovely and fresh-faced as
ever, but her mostly nuanced performance
also conveys the years of experience she has
in the industry. Byeon Woo-seok does his
best, and there are moments when it is clear
he has leading man potential (most of those
moments heavily feature his dimples). The
film itself is pretty slow paced, and takes
its time with the small moments. Retro is
the overall theme, from the Y2K outfits to
the golden tones of 1999 to the presence of
standard Kdrama tropes in the film. The
slo-mo, misunderstandings and noble
sacrifices, overly loud ‘tummy rumbling’
noises being the only way to
indicate hunger — they’re all present and
correct.
While the scenes between Bo-ra and the
people around her are beautifully shot and
full of warmth, one can’t help but wish this
had been at least a limited series instead.
Director Bang Woo-ri has done a decent
enough job with her debut feature film (and
adds even more proof to the statement that
men written by women will always be
superior), but the writing does not allow us
to be too invested in the stories of its
main characters. Emotional investment is
essential for any sort of payoff in case of
obstacles to our characters’ journeys, and
while female-led films like Om Shanti
Oshana have managed to pull this
off, Twentieth Century Girl feels
like each character needed at least 10 more
minutes worth of personality building.
That being said, the film is still a
steaming bowl of retro comfort soup. You
see, cliché or not, the truth about time is
that it is, in fact, fleeting. And one
reason we are all suckers for nostalgia and
watching other people’s youths play out on a
screen is that we have no way to change how
we lived our own. We want to see other
people experience love, joy and regret the
same way we did. We want to know we weren’t
the only ones who made mistakes, who
quibbled with their family, or never got
over someone we loved and lost. As long as
the screen shows us some form of who we wish
we were, we will keep watching. If you had
16 hours to spare on that watchlist, I would
definitely recommend Twenty Five Twenty
One. For similar feels in a
two-hour sized capsule, Twentieth
Century Girl is your answer.
Bring ice cream and Kleenex.
Twentieth Century
Girl is streaming on
Netflix.
***
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