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2002｜80 MIN | Animation

DIRECTOR LEE Sung-gang

CAST LEE Byung-hun, KONG Hyung-jin, AHN Sung-ki, BAE Jong-ok

RELEASE DATE January 11, 2002

CONTACT SIZ Entertainment Co., Ltd

Tel : +82 2 546 6835

Fax : +82 2 536 6830

Korea’s animation industry has long struggled to set itself apart from its far more dominant anime counterpart in Japan, but every so often a film has come out that has hinted at the true feature film potential of the country’s animation sector. An early example is LEE Sung-gang’s coming-of-age fantasy My Beautiful Girl, Mari. Combining fantastical whimsy with prosaic everyday themes, the film was a shot in the arm for an industry that until then had struggled to distinguish itself. 

Namwoo lives in Seoul where goes about his day toiling at his office job. One day, a meeting with an old friend brings him back to his childhood in the countryside when, at the age of 12, he lived with his widowed mother, his grandmother and his cat Yeo in a seaside village. One summer’s day, Namwoo comes across a beautiful marble in a store, only to later discover it at an abandoned lighthouse, at which point he and his cat are transported to a strange world where he meets the mysterious girl Mari.

Grounded in reality, LEE’s work takes after the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ template like so many others have before, as it follows a normal protagonist, who faces familiar family problems, on a journey down the rabbit hole.

Stylistically, My Beautiful Girl, Mari is every bit the equal of Studio Ghibli in the imagination department, although it is occasionally reminiscent of the Japanese studio’s works, such as My Neighbor Totoro. Where it can’t hope to match the anime powerhouse is in its technical sophistication as LEE’s film, though handsomely drawn, is more notable for its delightful backgrounds and whimsy than its more rudimentarily drawn protagonists.

Seen as the foremost figure in contemporary Korean animation, director LEE has continued to make films in the fantasy genre, such as 2007’s Yobi, The Five-Tailed Fox and Kai in 2016, which was produced by YEON Sang-ho, a more recent figure in the Korean animation scene.

Sharp-eared viewers will recognize a few familiar voices among the film’s cast, including superstar LEE Byung-hun as the adult version of Namwoo, AHN Sung-ki as Namwoo’s mother’s boyfriend and NA Moon-hee as Namwoo’s grandmother.

Like many other animated Korean titles, My Beautiful Girl, Mari struggled at the domestic box office, but those who saw it overseas, including the jury of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival which gave it the festival’s Grand Prize in 2002, embraced LEE’s film.