Testing Temporality

My Sassy Girl was probably the most easily enjoyable movie yet. Though the film addresses dark matters--death of a loved one for the drunk girl (did they ever mention her name? I couldn't find it), having to let go of a loved one because of family's unacceptance--the movie still felt lighthearted. Some critics I read even described the movie as "frothy."

For me as a viewer, there was one element that kept the movie from becoming too "frothy" or light--the playing on temporality.

When the movie starts out I feel as if it is bound to end in tragedy. The start is, essentially, the "end," and the story will then be told in the time that follows. But it is not so--what feels like it will be the end when it is shown again after the movie is actually added onto, and the end thus changes. Even in this way, the temporality is played with. The viewer thinks they know the end, only to see it added onto. For some this may be predictable, but for me it wasn't--I was truly convinced that the movie would end in tragedy.

Another element was extremely interesting to me in terms of temporality: the ambiguity of the old man waiting at the tree. When I first saw him, I assumed it was an older Kyun-woo. When the girl shows up, I assume she is just a lookalike repeating a similar story years later. But these things are broken down when we quickly find out that it is just some old man who happens to know about the tree. It seems odd that the old man would dig, find the letters, and read them--but he admits that he does. He also admits to knowing Kyun-woo and tells the story of the replanting of the tree.

When she runs into him at an accidental set-up, the girl tells Kyun-woo that, though it may seem incredible, she thinks she saw him from the future. Throughout the movie, this idea of the future is repeated--she explains to him in her letter that she feels as if she is in the future compared to her, presumably because she constantly wallows in the present over the loss of her old love.

The themes of the future felt a little confusing to me whenever mentioned throughout the movie--but the end wraps it up nicely and reveals the meaning behind everything. They are finally reunited in the present because of a "future man's" guidance.