‘Nothing Serious’ director creates female character talking openly about sex

Rookie Korean director Jung Ga-young, 31, said she focused on creating a female character with a daring personality when writing the script for romantic comedy “Nothing Serious”

“I wanted to make a rom-com. I am a big fan of the genre and on top of that I wanted to create a film that centers around a female character,” the director said during a press conference held at CGV Yongsan in central Seoul on Wednesday. “I also wanted the female character to be honest when talking about her sex life.”

Reflecting the director’s intention, the film begins with Ham Ja-young (Jeon Jong-seo), a 29-year-old single woman, engaging in sex with her ex-boyfriend in a dream. Ja-young then talks about it with her best friends. While hanging out with her friends, Ja-young finds out that her ex-boyfriend is getting married soon, then declares she is not going to be in a serious relationship anymore. She goes on a dating app to seek a no-strings-attached relationship.

Magazine editor Park Woo-ri (Son Suk-ku), 33, is a single man. Although he is not very good with romantic relationships, he is suddenly assigned to write a sex column. To write the column, Park also decides to go on a dating app, where he of course meets Ja-young.

The director explained that she set the two main characters on a path to meet through a dating app because she thinks more people have become curious about such apps, especially after COVID-19 broke out and it became more difficult to meet new people. 

Although the film features many sexual jokes and some sex scenes, the director said the movie is not meant to be provocative in that sense.

“I do not want the audience to view our film as a provocative film. I want it to be a fun and loving story about people falling in love. I talked about this with the actors before shooting the sex scenes,” Jung said.

During the press conference, lead actor Jeon talked about her chemistry with Son.

“This is the first movie in which I had to interact a lot with my partner. When filming scenes which I perform alone, I can usually do it a lot faster,” Jeon said. “But when you have co-stars you have to spend time communicating with them. We took time to talk about our characters when we were not shooting and also spent some time getting to know each other as well. I think the process helped our performance.”

The film hits local theaters Wednesday.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)