I’m Jin-Young

Original Title: 진영이
Release date: 2006
Director: Sung-eun Lee
Screenplay by: Sung-eun Lee
Cast: Min-kyoung Byun, Min-a Lee, Young-sun Kim

I’m Jin-Young follows the story of a little girl, whose name is Jin-Young (Byun), who can’t wait to grow up. She’s tired of boys and girls her age, she just wants to move on, get married, and be done with it. This feeling of wanting to grow up fast is enhanced when she meets the friend of her mother, Hyun-ji (Kim)… and falls in “love” with her.

This charming coming of age romantic comedy breaks the Fourth Wall, as Jin-Young often addresses us and looks straight at the camera, which works quite well because we could keep rolling our eyes at the little girl, but she keeps pointing it out. She knows we know, and we become not just the audience… we become part of her family. Jin-Young is like a niece telling us her life, as if we were her favorite uncle/aunt.

She falls in “love” with her mom’s friend… who happens to be a girl, and matter-of-factly tells us that relationships between women must work better because they can’t get divorce! She also mentions they can’t get married either, but that doesn’t stop her from comparing life with her dad and her mom.

I’m Jin-Young also has an apt ending, not fairytale-like or bizarre, in which Jin-Young gets what she wants. Instead, she sort of wakes up and realizes that she still has time to be a kid. The short is sweet and very comical — which would label it as a rom-com — but is grounded in reality, making it a very pleasant watch.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Buy the Korea Short Film Queer Collection 1, which includes I’m Jin-Young.

Part of the Korean Film Blogathon by newkoreancinema.com

Ghost Writer

Here. There. Everywhere. Punished soul that usually watches what nobody wants, but sometimes gets lucky.

2 Responses

  1. amy says:

    So… how many of you have dreamed of marrying a grown up when you were kids? LOL, I remember a lot of 14 year-olds wanting to marry Brad Pitt circa Meet Joe Black…

  1. June 14, 2014

    […] dealt with girls having crushes on their mom/older sister’s special friends in shorts like I’m Jin-Young, but it’s even more dramatic on this segment because there is a point in which May actually […]

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