20th Century Girl not an overcomplicated rom-com

Posted Dec. 12, 2022

By Kaylin Saechao

Cub Reporter

Bang Woo-ri brings a late 90’s nostalgic rom-com, “ 20th Century Girl,” where a teen girl named Na Bora begins to keep close tabs on a boy who attends her school in place of her friend Kim Yeondu. 

The film starts with Bora ( Kim Yoojung) saying her goodbyes to her best friend Yeondu (Roh Yoonseo) who has to go to the U.S. to go under very serious heart surgery. Before Yeon-du leaves, she becomes exceedingly smitten after she meets a boy, Baek Hyunjin (Park Jungwoo) and asks Bora to find out everything she can about Hyunjin, who is a forward popular schoolmate. Being the loyal friend she is, Bora goes out of her way, using multiple silly tactics to find out more information on Hyunjin.

Bora emails Yeondu every little thing she finds out, going from his shoe size, his best friend’s home address, etc. Bora quite literally stalks him to find out everything she can, but an unexpected situation occurs where Bora ends up falling for Hyunjin’s best friend, Poong Woonho (Byeon Wooseok).

The film shows VHS tapes, pagers, public phone booths, to express the era of the movie. Some scenes refresh memories of some of the most recognizable media moments of the 90’s in Korea. The script matches up with each scene quite perfectly and is well presented by the actors. 20th Century Girl is such a heart-tugging film, it shows the significance of someone’s first love and its impact on one’s life. Bora tries to suppress her feelings for Woonho for the sake of her friendship with Yeondu. 

Though the characters can be seen as generic, the movie didn’t fail at forming tears. The scenes were beautiful and overall bright and sweet. The film does hold the cliche aspect, but that’s just a given most of the time in films like this one. This story line isn’t complicated. Its a sad rom-com where the love, and nostalgia is well delivered. Now there is no real villain, while there isn’t one there are however a lot of complicated feelings, and a lot of lack of communication between the characters. The film gave a overall cute vibe, but had a good mix of scenes where you were either squealing or you were wanting to let your anger out on a pillow.