Girls’ Night Out

With an openness still rare in Korean cinema, Girls’ Night Out looks at a phase in the sexual maturing of three women. The film opens with a long sequence sitting at the table where they describe their erotic dreams without any embarrassment, filled with enthusiasm and vivacious self-assuredness. In the course of the film, there are more of such entertaining chats, in which all three women (‘high sex’, ‘low sex’ and ‘no sex’) reveal their personal situation. Ho-Jung runs a design office and has many alternate bed partners. Yeon, a waitress, sees sex more as a logical consequence of marriage than as a source of pleasure. Soon, a rather shy student, is still a virgin and wants to be financially independent. One day she may even want to bring up a child on her own. The subjects that the three women discuss together vary from marriage to orgasms and masturbation. The film, shot by hand, is energetic and lively, with fresh and sharp dialogues. Im Sang-Soo does not shrink back from presenting the fears and desires of the women in a very direct way on the screen. Where another Korean film, Lies, is controversial with its screening of unveiled sexuality, the narrative sex in Girls’ Night Out is just as confrontational.