Themes: High School Life, Teachers and Students, Prostitutes
Main Cast: Kim Ok-bin, Park Jin-woo, Lee Kyung Bok
Release Year: 2006
Country: KR
Run Time: 99 minutes
Plot
Untold Scandal director E J-yong returns to the helm to direct this campy adaptation of the popular internet comic concerning the sex-obsessed students of Useless High. When all the teens at Useless High except for the virginal Poor Girl (Kim Ok-bin) and one-eyed outcast Cyclops (Lee Kyeon) come to the realization that they have all caught syphilis from the same person, their bustling classroom quickly becomes a ghost town. A poverty-stricken teen whose mother (Im Hye-jin) is attempting to get rich by selling miniature pyramids, Poor Girl soon decides to sell her body in order to pay the bills. Her plan hits a hitch, however, when none of her potential clients seem particularly interested in sex. Though Poor Girl longs for a lasting commitment from well-to-do Swiss exchange student Anthony (Park Jin-woo), her romantic longings are soon torpedoed when Anthony falls for Cyclops' strangely attractive "sister" Two Eyes (Lee Eun-seong) who is, in reality, a man awaiting the day he can afford gender reassignment surgery. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Review
While it's a shame, it's also somewhat understandable that E J-yong's candy-colored musical satire of contemporary Korean mores, Dasepo Naughty Girls, was a disappointment at the box office. It's too sweet and brainy to attract the kind of audiences that Sex is Zero drew, and the filmmaker's apparent disregard for the niceties of plot and character development could potentially frustrate those seeking more conventional fare. The episodic nature of the piece could also be deemed problematic. It is, after all, based on a popular internet comic strip. There's a climactic battle with an otherworldly being that goes on for far too long. Humor is subjective, of course, and not everyone will necessarily find the little stuffed man on Poor Girl's (Kim Ok-bin) back ("Poverty"), or the fact that her mother sees their financial salvation in a pyramid scheme selling, well. . .little metal pyramids, or even that the unpopular one-eyed student, Cyclops (Lee Kyeon), disparagingly calls his gorgeous transsexual older sister (Lee Eun-seong) "Double Eyes" amusing. But E, who also co-wrote the script with Choi Jin-seong, takes aim at such a wide range of targets, and with such infectious high energy, that one is bound to find something to like. In fact the film, for a great portion of its running time, is a hoot. It's bright, funny, and outrageous without being tawdry, and it still manages to make surprisingly trenchant points about poverty, our increasing reliance on the internet for social interaction, and conformity. Happily, the film found an appreciative audience at the 2007 New York Asian Film Festival, where it was shown with the director in attendance. ~ All Movie Guide
