Sunny

Nami lives in a nice apartment with her businessman husband and teenage daughter. To outward appearances, she is fortunate, but in reality she passes much of her time in quiet desperation. One day, while visiting her mother in the hospital, she runs into one of her old high school classmates, Chunhwa. Overjoyed to see each other, they begin talking and reminiscing about the past, and soon enough they begin to wonder what has become of the other five members of their high school group, which had been called “Sunny.” Energized by their reunion, they decide to track down the other women. With this, director Kang Hyung-chul takes us on a journey, both across Seoul in the search of old friends, and into the past in an extended flashback that shows us how they all became acquainted in 1986. The scenes set at Jindeok Girls’ High School, warm and colorful in tone, make for a sharp visual contrast with the scenes set in the present. They center around the young Nami (played by Shim Eun-kyung, a young actress who is quickly gaining recognition for her talent), a shy transfer student, and Chunhwa (Kang So-ra), the self-confident leader of Sunny who invites her into their circle. The flashback sequences are, to a certain extent, a humorous coming-of-age story, but even more than that they are about how the bonds of friendship help the girls to overcome the challenges in their lives. The seven-member group is made up of diverse personalities, and each of them face different troubles at home or at school, but in each case it is their developing friendship that gives them the confidence to face down their problems. In other hands, such scenes might come across as overly sentimental, but director Kang’s natural gift for storytelling and humor keeps us thoroughly engaged. Meanwhile as we watch the flashback scenes, it starts to cast the scenes set in the present in a new light. Seoul in 2011 feels more sterile and forbidding, and the challenges that face our protagonists seem more serious. Our protagonists have changed too — it’s not just that the confidence and energy of youth have left them, but they have matured in ways we wouldn’t have expected. But something happens when these long-lost old friends reunite. Gradually we start to pick up hope that, even 25 years later, their friendship can once again come to their rescue. Films about women, which center around friendships between women rather than romance, are hard to get produced. Investors see them as having low potential at the box office, and there are few success stories to point to from the past. In the case of Sunny, investment flowed in because second-time director Kang Hyung-chul’s previous film Scandal Makers earned $50 million at the box office. It seemed a reasonable gamble, despite the fact that Sunny was to feature a large ensemble cast and no major stars. In the end, not only was it a popular smash hit, but it sold more tickets than the three most expensive Korean films of 2011 (My Way, Sector 7, The Front Line) combined. It’s hard enough to make a hit film, but when you succeed so spectacularly in a genre such as this, that’s truly impressive.