In 1970s Korea, as the pace of industrialization reached its peak, huge numbers of young men and women moved to Seoul from the countryside. They came to work in factories, or textile mills, or to take up menial service jobs. Although many no doubt had dreams of a brighter future, their circumstances in the present were often tough, and they were vulnerable to being cheated or exploited. Among the countless stories of these young workers, many are tragic.
Youngja and Changsoo are two such people, and Youngja’s Heyday is the sensational, garish, bittersweet story of their relationship. Changsoo works in a factory, and Youngja is a maid at the home of Changsoo’s boss. Youngja is not interested in romance — she’s come to Seoul to make money — but Changsoo almost changes her mind… until he is drafted for a three-year deployment to the Vietnam War. He makes her promise to wait for him, but then they lose contact. Three years later, when they do meet again by chance, Changsoo is shocked to see that Youngja has become a foul-mouthed, one-armed prostitute. The story of what happened to her during those three years, and of what transpires after their reunion, forms the central story of the ironically-titled Youngja’s Heyday.
To be sure, this could have been a really bad movie, but director Kim Ho-sun managed to turn his second feature film into something remarkable. Although in its crazier moments it seems ready to jump the rails (and this is one of its endearing qualities), the film is held together by its genuine and obvious sympathy for its lead characters. Youngja does not have a typical personality — even before her sudden twists of fate, she is a bit spunkier and a bit freer with her emotions than the average woman. In this sense, she can be seen as a kind of My Sassy Girl of the 1970s. But then things go very, very wrong in her life, and a combination of shame and stress push her towards the breaking point. In this sense, she embodies all the pain and humiliation suffered by a generation of young women whose lives in Seoul did not go as planned.
For a story like this it’s especially important to find charismatic actors, and this is one of the film’s key strengths. Song Jae-ho has remained active to the present day; contemporary viewers will recognize him as the replacement police chief in Memories of Murder. He has an everyman charm, and his devotion to Youngja comes across as completely genuine and touching. Yeom Bok-soon, by contrast, had a comparatively short career, and is remembered almost exclusively for her dazzling performance in this film. Yeom breathes life into the character of Youngja, making her both fully engaging and instantly memorable. Together with Ahn In-sook of Hometown of the Stars, and Chang Mi-hee in Winter Woman, she is one of the popular icons of 1970s Korean cinema.
Darcy Paquet