Flying Boys is a portrait of a particular time in life: the last year of high school. For Koreans, it is a crucial year, as it entails taking a test (given once a year) that will determine whether they can go to university. If they fail, then they have to spend another 12 months studying for a second try. Then there are more universal challenges: the awkwardness of adolescence, fighting with family members, falling in love. Flying Boys captures all the confusion, emotions and energy of this time of life.
Min-jae (played by Yun Gye-sang, a pop star making his film debut) is a kid who looks like he does well in school, who doesn’t. He lives with his father, an airline pilot, after having his mother pass away a year earlier. He has long had a fascination with a girl named Su-jin who lives in his apartment block, but he’s too scared to approach her. Meanwhile, the smart and competent Su-jin (played by Kim Min-jeong of L’Abri) is frustrated with her life and family, and itching to get away. She tells her parents that she’ll study at a low-ranking university in Jeju Island - which in most people’s eyes would be throwing away her talent.
Min-jae and Su-jin are thrown together in an unexpected setting: a ballet class. (The film’s original title is "Ballet Studio") Both are forced to join against their will, but as time passes they get acquainted, and also get to know the odd cast of characters in their class.
After her acclaimed trilogy of documentaries about Comfort Women, everyone expected director Byun Young-joo to move into austere, political feature films. Her fiction debut Ardor (2002) was not what critics were expecting, however, and with Flying Boys she commits herself further to making genre films that are audience-oriented, while refusing to compromise her personal ideals.