Korean Movie Night

Ever since Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire sang “It’s a Fine Romance” in 1936’s Swing Time, movies have been bowing down to the power of love. Unfortunately, Hollywood just doesn’t make romantic comedies the way they used to and these days if you’re looking for love in an American movie, you’re looking for it in all the wrong places. Thank Aphrodite for Korea. Ever since My Sassy Girl broke box office records in 2001, the Korean film industry has been making some of the funniest, most outrageously swoony movie romances, and for this series we’ve picked three of the best.

Tuesday, March 13 @ 

CYRANO AGENCY (2010)

The biggest romantic hit of 2010 (grossing only slightly less than Harry Potter and the Proper Noun: Part 1) this big budget romantic comedy won “Best Screenplay” and its star, Lee Min-Jung (Boys Over Flowers) won a truckload of “Best New Actress” awards. Full of irreconcilable differences, beautiful stars and ridiculous, laugh-out-loud plot twists, it’s all about the Cyrano Agency, a matchmaking service that sets up elaborate, Mission Impossible-style scenarios to help their clients win the man (or woman) of their dreams. Now, their 100% success rate is in danger because a sad sack hedge fund manager wants to date a free spirited gal who just happens to be the head of the Cyrano Agency’s ex. Hollywood hasn’t made a movie this frantic and romantic in decades.

Tuesday, March 27 @ 

MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT (New York Premiere, 2009)

Opening at number one, and staying in the box office top ten for nine straight weeks, MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT is the Korean version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Kim Ha-Neul gets dumped by her boyfriend, Kang Ji-Hwan, because she’s never around. Actually, she’s a spy. Three years later, he runs into her again, only now he’s also joined the intelligence service too, albeit in a different department. Now they both have undercover identities they both have to keep hidden and they’ve got secret missions they both have to fulfill, while working out the trauma of their past relationship. Full of high-speed chases and plenty of glossy gunplay, it’s easy to see why a movie this fast on its feet is already slated for a Bollywood remake.

Tuesday, April 10 @ 

PETTY ROMANCE (US Premiere, 2010)

A word-of-mouth hit in 2010, this romance is set in the world of manhwa (Korean comic books), and the couple at the center of the story have chemistry to burn. TV star Lee Seon-Gyun is a struggling manhwa artist who enters a competition with a massive cash prize. To raise his chances of winning, he hires a sex advice columnist, Choi Gang-Heui (star of the breakout hit, My Scary Girl), to write his erotic comic. Little does he know that she plagiarized her column from the Kama Sutra and the Kinsey Report because her ideas about sex are a bit…vague, to put it kindly. PETTY ROMANCE been winning hearts and minds on the film festival circuit for a year and it’s a guaranteed crowd pleaser.