Girls’ Night Out — Noah Cowan

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
1999

Girls’ Night Out
Im Sang-soo
SOUTH KOREA, 1998
101 minutes
Colour/35mm
Production Company: Uno Films
Producer: Teha Sung-jai
Screenplay: Im Sang-soo
Cinematographer: Alex Hong
Editor: Kyung Min-ho
Production Designer: O Jae-won
Sound: Lee In-gyu
Music: Moon Joon-ho
Principal Cast: Kang Soo-yeon, Jin Hee-kyung, Kim Yeo-jin
Production: Uno Films

This delightful surprise is a hyper-kinetic, extremely raunchy and confrontational sexual awakening film. In an extended opening sequence around the dinner table, three young women begin trading off their tales of erotic dreams and encounters in a frank, unembarrassed way. Not your average fare from the Korean cinema! But there is nothing lurid about their disclosures because they deliver the goods with such enthusiasm and empowered assuredness. In that respect, it is not unlike the gleeful housewife-empowering film A Hot Roof, which charmed Festival audiences a few years ago.

Throughout the film, the women get together to talk on four different occasions, their topics of conversation ranging from orgasms to masturbation to marriage. Ho-Jung (Kang Soo-yeon), the president of a design firm, has no qualms about sleeping with any man she finds interesting. Soon (Kim Yeo-jin), a graduate student, is a virgin who wants to be financially independent and perhaps raise a child on her own. Yeon (Jin Hee-kyung), a waitress, dreams of meeting a decent guy and getting married, and views sex as merely a necessary consequence of marriage—an opinion her fiancé does not share. Though the conversations remain about sex throughout, each of the women brings a personal situation to the table that deeply affects all of their lives.

Director Im does not shy away from bringing to the screen the very real and very dramatic yearnings and fears of three young women at a transitional point in their lives. He implicates us in a world where no topic is taboo, and yet does so with such sensitivity toward his characters that we cannot help but want to join in on the racy fun.
—Noah Cowan