Park Ji-Hyun And Choi Si-Won Monitor Erotica In ‘Forbidden Fairytale’

Yoon Dan-bi has a dream. As the daughter of a children’s book writer she dreams of creating stories for children. Like her dad’s upbeat storybook characters she’s optimistic about success, even if it takes time to materialize. To pay the bills she applies for a civil service job. That’s how things quickly get R-rated in the Korean film Forbidden Fairytale, which premieres this week at the New York Asian Film Festival.

When Dan-bi, played by Park Ji-hyun, arrives at her new job, she learns she has been assigned to the Youth Protection Team at Korea’s Communications Standards Commission. Her job is to look at various media and decide whether it violates the decency standards. Basically, she has to decide if it’s porn? Okay, it’s not what she thought she signed up for, but she tries to make it work.

Then she runs into Hwang Chang-seob, a publisher of adult romances, accidentally slamming her bike into his antique car. Chang-seob, played enthusiastically by Sung Dong-il, insists she pay for the damages to his beloved car, but it’s more money than she can earn at her civil service job. In exchange she vows to write some erotica for him. How difficult can it be? It turns out to be embarrassingly difficult. Apparently, writing an adult romance is not something you can just google.

She turns to her fun girlfriends for anecdotes from their own romantic adventures and uses them to create stories that become very popular. Dan-bi asks a fellow employee to read her stories and provide objective feedback. Co-worker Kang Jeong-suk, played by Choi Si-won, confirms that her stories are well written and are effective adult romances. He can’t be completely honest about the way they make him feel. After all, they are just co-workers.

What follows is the hilarious story of a writer finding her calling, which happens to be erotica, and two people who gradually fall in love while dispassionately monitoring and discussing adult entertainment. Both characters experience some amusingly embarrassing scenes as Dan-bi explores her true talent, yet Forbidden Fairytale is ultimately a sweet love story. Although Dan-bi and Jeong-suk are exposed to Internet porn all day, their relationship progresses at an endearingly slow pace.

Park, who previously appeared in Reborn Rich, Do You Like Brahms and Rookie Historian, creates an amiable character in Dan-bi. She’s relatively innocent but not a prude. She’s generally easy-going but able to defend herself.

Choi, a member of the k-pop group Super Junior, is wryly funny as Dan-bi’s co-worker, a civil servant convinced he’s immune to the provocations of adult entertainment. His subtle comedy skills have brightened dramas such as My Fellow Citizens, She Was Pretty and Love is For Suckers. Sung appears in a variety of Korean film and drama roles, including the recent dramas The Tale of Lady Ok, My Sweet Mobster and Curtain Call.

Forbidden Fairytale is directed by Lee Jong-seok, who also directed the film The Negotiation, starring Hyun Bin. The screenplay was written by Yoon Joo-hoon.

Forbidden Fairytale debuted in South Korea in January and after that opened in Vietnam. The film will have its U.S. debut at 6:15 pm July 13 at NYAFF and air on Viki.com on July 25. The 24th edition of the festival runs from July 11 to 27 across four NYC venues—Film at Lincoln Center, SVA Theatre, LOOK Cinemas W57, and the Korean Cultural Center in New York. The festival will feature 75 premieres—including eight world premieres—and 17 directorial debuts. This year’s theme is “Cinema as Disruption” and Forbidden Fairytale offers an entertainingly different perspective on what constitutes a rom-com.