So I’m reading this book — for the purposes of reviewing it — and the strange thought hit me: for those who have seen the Korean film 엽기적인 그녀 — known in English as My Sassy Girl, though the English title is meh.
(The Korean title, “Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo” is more like, “That Weirdo Girl” or “That Bizarre Girl,” as I understand it. 엽기적인 hjas dictionary entries for “bizarre” and “grotesque” but the phrase is also used for, for example, “pulp fiction” or the Korean name for Mashimaro.)
Anyway, the thing I noticed was this: the last word of the title in Korean, Geunyeo, and the name of the male protagonist, “Gyeon-u” sound pretty similar. One vowel is shifted in position, and the other is changed. I wonder if there’s a pun at work there. The film features a nice, normal guy who essentially ends up courting — and suffering from — a crazed young Korean woman who is dealing with (though not in the healthiest way) the death of her last boyfriend.
But his patience and persistence, indeed, seem somewhat freakish to me considering how crazy the girl is throughout the film. So I wonder if there’s a hidden pun there, in reference to how bizarre his persistence is. I don’t remember any such reference in the film, but while the title clearly can be read straightforwardly, it’s interesting to read that last word also as an ironic inversion of the other weirdo in the movie, the male lead.
More coming soon… but I’m in an somewhat overly analytical mindset these days, as I’m working on a paper about The Host, and the overload has hit me.