Well paced. Interesting. Heartfelt. Emotional. Just a few words to describe 20th Century Girl. The movie does well setting the groundwork for the relationships that are built throughout its runtime.

This movie tells a deep and lifelong story about lost love in a short amount of time. I hope that more Korean dramas have pacing more on par with what we saw here. It never dragged its story with filler and continued to move forward at a pace that kept it fresh and interesting. Obviously, like most K-Dramas a lot of the issues that come up between our characters is as a result of an egregious lack of communication skills, but the motivation for the misunderstanding was plausible, so it gets a pass here.

Otherwise, I greatly appreciated the change in tone later in that movie and how it wasn’t so heavy handed with showing us too much. Sometimes it’s better to leave things up to to audience interpretation rather than have it spelt out so obviously, as tends to be a cliché in romantic K-Dramas. The ambiguity of the twist might be divisive, (depending on your tastes) but achieves its intention. Furthermore, maybe we could have spent a little more time with the other leads, but that’s a small nitpick in an otherwise fine movie.

I generally think they focused their attention where they needed to and that this is definitely a movie worth watching. If you’re looking for something a little different in the genre of Korean “romantic comedies”, definitely give 20th century girl a try.

Recommendation: WATCH