Review: Seducing Mr. Perfect

I love me some Asian films. In fact I did a semester on Asian Films at uni – it was the first time I ever knew people (a class of mostly white Australians) studied the stuff, like really studied and analysed it.

My experience with Asian cinema was the Vietnamese dubbed Hong Kong TVB dramas (and similar brands) I used to enjoy with my mum. Minus the one scratchy VHS of Spiritual Kung Fu dubbed in Vietnamese (which by the way freakin’ kicks ass as I imagine the translation of humour from Cantonese to Vietnamese is without hiccup).

So when I thought ‘movies’ I always thought Hollywood.

Insert here ‘Seducing Mr. Perfect‘, a South Korean film from 2006 I recently watched, and according to several online reviews sucked because it was, ‘nothing more than a cheeky Hollywood-copy, along with a fitting polished look and international style.‘^[1]

Not so authentically Korean, and not ‘the reason why western audiences love to watch korean rom-coms… [which is] mainly because of a different culture and a wacky-jarring, but universal kind of humor, we only get to see from korean flicks.‘^[1]

Hey this is a totally valid point – it’s the equivalent of people wanting to have Westernised-Asian food from Wagamama (as May’s article ‘Wagamama: The taste of Asia yet no sight of Asians‘ points out) and then go on to declare ‘I love Asian food!’.

Snippet of the film:

But I really liked this film, and heck, maybe because it was so darn Americanised.

Firstly, there’s just something about chick-flick/rom-com movies that is so America to me: the cheesy plots (cheesy as in ‘Mr Sandman‘ incidental music); the highly polished imagery; the always sunny weather (except when it’s a pivotal moment and it rains); the white girl/boy next-door characters; the metropolitan settings; the ‘New york, New york‘ or Jason Mraz-like bursts of music.

They’ve really perfected the formula, and it’s no brain-olympic-marathon to watch one, just plain ol’ fun.

Seduction is a two-way street

Secondly, take a step back for a moment. Here I am, an Asian living in a Western world who grew up watching American films (and god knows how much American culture has influenced or ‘Americanised’ Australian culture, take ‘Maccas‘ for example. Okay I know, I shouldn’t be reducing culture to hamburgers). And like so many of us, an Asian surrounded by images of Caucasians living similar lifestyles to mine, on the big screen as well as the small screen.

However here was a film with all leading characters played by Asian actors. This film satisfied a thirst, while all the while, I had no idea I was dehydrated (alright alright, I promise, no more stupid metaphors).

What I mean is that I felt like I was watching one of those – being as I’m so ‘Americanised’ – I see as ‘typical’ rom-coms, except the characters were representative of people like me.

The male love interest ‘Mr Perfect’ Robin Heiden (handsome Daniel Henney) is someone I would totally date (like in my dreams) and the woman protagonist, Min June (Min Joon; gorgeous Uhm Jung-hwa) looked like she could be any one of my cousins or even me (note: I’m aspiring to look like).

Asian hyphen American?

Instead of the film coming across, as with other Asian films where the Asian characters are living in Asia, the characters felt as though they were Asians living outside of Asia… Asian Australians or more specifically Asian Americans (even though technically they were in Asia).

And rightly so, the male love interest Robin Heiden IS Asian American (Japanese American). So no imaginings happening on my part. All factors of the film would have been deliberate: an inclusion of an Asian American character (and actor), the english script, and the Americanisation of the film.

Where East meets West and the blur in-between

Watch that snippet above, it took me, oh say, 5 minutes into the film to realise they were in South Korea. I just figured they were in the States, in a Chinatown of some sort. I think they tried to deliberately trick the audience with all the travelling visual imagery in the beginning.

The entire film plays on this idea of East meets West AND East colliding with West AND East falls in love with West AND East and West become one… and the becoming was not so much between two people, but through the concept of each character and what they symbolised.

There are continual plays between the two realms:

Robin is obviously Eurasian… or not so quite obvious (because it was never discussed). Either way he is not quite Asian nor quite American, but is distinctly Asian American. Robin is the American representative in this film to all the other characters. Everything about him is American… except the other bits that make him Asian (the deep ‘Confucius’ need to honour his grandfather, for example). Ha! Only in an Asian film can a person of colour with Asian characteristics be representative of an American!

Here he was, an Asian American coming back to Asia, falling in love with an Asian girl, breaking a white girl’s heart – talk about a film where it flips intercultural relationships to the benefit of us.

June is portrayed as the career woman, probably in her early to mid-30s and is still single, cropped hairdo, feisty personality and has had numerous failed relationships. Her character is that usual female rom-com ‘Working Girl‘ but Asian-style.

Korenglish

Throughout the film, Robin speaks mainly in English whilst June speaks in Korean. Think about it, unless you’re a Korean American/Australian/Canadian etc. or well-versed in both languages, you’re gonna have to read subtitles. As a side note, think about the work the script writers would have gone through (which would probably explain awkward lines like, ‘Do you know how cute you really are?’ on the bridge).

I loved the play with dialogue – how they would speak mainly in their native languages, educate each other in their languages and how they were able to communicate thoughts and conversations fluidly.

Like me and my Vietnamese and English – the word concepts in both languages are fluid in my mind (fluid conversations), but the words are nevertheless distinct from each other at the same time (both characters speaking in different languages). Because of the subtitles I even forgot June spoke Korean!

My Vietnamese listening skills are ace, but I suck at speaking it fluidly, and here are two characters demonstrating this experience onscreen. For any half-wit bilingual person like me, this would ring true to life *ding ding*.

Seducing both sides

There were some parts that I thought deliberately catered to an Asian-Western audience. Such as the white character, minor-antagonist, Jennifer Cohan (Holly Karrol Clark) who on first meeting pegs the name ‘Pocahontas’ to June. A clever manoeuvre that makes a cluey audience immediately think, ‘I hate that chick’, due to the character’s obvious racist rhetoric.*

I wonder what other stuff I missed that was intended for the Korean audience. I know as an Asian I could relate very well to the humour in the last scene where Robin meets June’s parents. However, if I wasn’t brought up in a traditional Asian household, I wonder if I would have predicted June’s parents’ response before it happened.

Being somewhat Asian doesn’t make you all that Asian

In the last scene, it demonstrates the Americaness of Robin. Up until then, he seemed so Asian (re: honouring of his grandfather, his skill with Japanese and Korean).

I like the way Robin ‘the American’ needed to be made understood by the Asians, when so often in Western movies it’s the other way around.

Clip of last scene:

Mr Perfect and his pickup lines

I can’t forget to mention the ‘umbrella in my room’ line. I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t watched it, but man it’s one of those classic lines on film – comical genius, universal humour, hilarious!

Some highlights

• June says in Korean the English idiom ‘Rubbing salt into [the] wound’. I’m not sure if this was translated word for word, or rather that the English idiom had replaced something else she had said. But it’s interesting to note that if it was word for word, how much of this film was meant for an Asian-Western audience. In addition, June says ‘you’re so dry’ in reference to Robin and it is quite transferable – I’ve never come across this kind of slang before, so I’m guessing it’s Korean.
• When Robin first speaks to June (after she hits his car) he speaks to her in English even though they’re both in South Korea (I think this is where I got confused as to where they were). I thought it demonstrated the arrogance of English speakers and how no matter what country they’re in will exclaim, ‘Does anyone here speak English?!’ and expect people to know English.
• In one of the beginning scenes where June spies for Robin, the two British men refer to Robin as a ‘yellow monkey’ not an ‘American rival’. Although everyone else saw Robin as representative of an American, they saw him as an Asian man. I like to use a similar example when I speak to any Asian Australian denier out there.
• Again in that same scene, June attempts to pretend she doesn’t know English; that’s a game I have the luxury of playing sometimes too.
• Karaoke scene. I always thought it interesting that Asian songs sometimes feature English words – how Americanised Asia has become. I guess Pop music has its origins in America. Karaoke is an Asian invention, but with all the English songs out there it’s a rather ‘salad bowl’ phenomenon.
• In a car scene after June spies for Robin, June mispronounces ‘fault’ and it’s only funny if you know that Koreans can have difficulty pronouncing ‘f’.
• In one of the final scenes where June and Robin negotiate the Maeda deal with the Japanese executives, both of these Asian groups – Japanese and the Koreans – communicate not in an Asian language, but in a European one!

Minus the passable acting from Henney (I didn’t like the way he delivered (second last scene): ‘You are more beautiful than any other woman I have ever met in my life’); which got cancelled out by the fabulous performance of Uhm; the sometimes eww wording of the script and the predictability of the plot; yet living up to its rom-comical genre, I give this a 4 out of 5 slants for all the other things that made me smile.

References

* Pocahontas was Native American. Did you know that the Disney movie portrayal was not true to history? In fact the English colonists held Pocahontas captive, and although John Rofle married her, it was never said whether it was against her will. Pocahontas: Marriage to John Rolfe on Wikipedia.

• [1] Seducing Mr. Perfect. AsianMovieWeb.com. 2007. [Retrieved 27 August, 2010].