Dasepo (Naughty Girls) 2006, South Korea

The South Korean film “Dasepo” by E.J-Yong Lee made quite the surrealistic impression to this year’s festival. As if to be the byproduct of an elongated post American 1950’s Busby Berkeley sequence, this film makes a sub genre all it’s own. Slightly sci-fi, a bit musical, and full of adolescent sexual slap stick, “Dasepo” proves culturally baffling. Although the film has a tremendously fun time exposing all the crude modern day immaturity’s, it appears devoutly unorganized in form. With the random introduction of at least ten separate plots within one film, it becomes extremely easy to get lost in story structure. This possibly causes the viewer to just simply embrace the film’s odd shenanigans, and disregard any hope of common analyzation or comprehension.

“Dasepo” amplifies the profiling of social class and media influence. This proves evident with countless sequences that are based on cell phones, cameras, karaoke, fashion, and wealth. This idyllic view gives way to a social hierarchy, which helps set the constant sub-plots and the inner stories in which it contains. The film loosely follows the nameless lead role; a lower class girl that attends an severely bizarre high-school. The film has little focus on any singular event within the character’s life, however remains entertaining throughout each vaudeville-like scenario. As the playground style sexual humor dominates the film’s main theme, one can still obtain bleak notes of class morality, gender acceptance, and the desire to fulfil motivations.

Everything from a principle possessed by a virginity dragon, dominatrix teachers, transsexual student, and last but not least……….. a Cyclops. “Dasepo” exemplifies modern Asian pop culture, and combines a traditional contemporary form of Asian folklore. Although this film had me convinced I was in for a night of horrific psychedelic dreams, it did remain fun to watch, loud in humor, and gargantuan in modest immaturity.