SOUTH KOREAN DIRECTOR Kwak Jae-yong is dressed conservatively - boots, chinos, polo shirt - when we meet in the library at Yau Ma Tei's Broadway Cinemateque, and he fits right in with the mid-week afternoon cinema crowd milling around the cafe. Kwak has been in town this week to promote The Classic, the much-anticipated follow-up to his massive hit My Sassy Girl (2001) - the most popular Korean film ever to screen in Hong Kong with box office takings of $14 million, and the most popular romantic-comedy of all time back home clocking up a staggering US$26 million.
What sets him apart from your average popcorn-munching cinema junky is the air of a man slightly bemused by what's going on around him - as if he's not quite sure how to comprehend it all. That could be due to the fact that My Sassy Girl has achieved cult-like status in Hong Kong - young couples were known to line up to watch it time and time again - and so interest in him among local media organisations is intense. Or it could be due to the fact that our conversation is proceeding down a translation super highway that sees each question go from English into Cantonese then into Korean before reaching him.
His first inkling that My Sassy Girl might strike a chord with audiences was when it screened at Yubari International Film Festival in Japan. The film - a genre-twisting tale of a besotted young man (Cha Tae-hyeon), the 'sassy' girl who has taken his heart (Jeon Ji-hyeon), and the tests she puts their love through - was an instant hit in Japan. 'The audience loved it,' says the 43-year-old Kwak. 'So I knew then it would be a success overseas. All the audiences who have seen the film go through the same emotions. So that makes me very happy too.'
What also brings a smile to his face is the fact that Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks snapped up the rights to remake My Sassy Girl for an undisclosed sum, and is set to start work on its version later this year.
'This will be the first Korean film to be remade in the US. That means that an even larger world-wide audience will get to see the film,' says Kwak, who also wrote the screenplay.
Kwak treads on some familiar territory with The Classic - again he is both director and screenwriter and again, at its heart, is a story of love (see review). But while My Sassy Girl played for laughs along the way, The Classic taps into a rich vein of sentimentality. The story deals with a college student in present-day Korea, Ji-hae (Son Ye-jin), who finds a box full of her mother's letters, triggering flashbacks to her mother's love life. The story bounces back and forth as Ji-hae struggles to get her own world in order. It is, says Kwak, something close to his heart. 'I am a sentimental man in my heart - you just can't see it in my face,' he chuckles. 'My wife saw the film and cried. I told her that it's my own emotion that she saw in this film and she was surprised that I, her husband, as a man, has this kind of sad emotion deep in my heart.'
Kwak says The Classic is equal parts personal feelings, experience and stories he has heard. 'When I first wrote the script, it had a different, sadder ending because in my mother's generation, people becoming separated from each other was common,' he says. 'But I felt it was too sad. What I've tried to do is merge the ideas and emotions my mother's generation had with those of the current generation. It also helps me release my own emotions.'
