How Sexy K-Comedy ‘Forbidden Fairytale’ Avoided Censorship

Yoon Dan-bi is an aspiring children’s book writer in the Korean film Forbidden Fairytale. To pay the bills she gets a civil service job and plans to write at night. However, the job is not quite what she imagined. As a member of the Youth Protection Team at Korea’s Communications Standards Commission, her job involves monitoring X-rated media. Which scenes should be censored? Which body parts should be blurred? This entertainingly risqué rom com takes a lighthearted look at the serious topic of censorship and in so doing risked being censored. That was something director Lee Jong-seok considered from the start.

Lee waited for a decade to make this film because he liked “the way it covered the topics of censorship and creative freedom.” He also wanted to make a comedy. His last film was The Negotiation, which stars Son Ye-jin as an ace crisis negotiator and Hyun Bin as a kidnapper. While that film featured some comic moments, it often brought him to a dark place.

“I was always thinking about how to kill someone,” said Lee. “That was just so top of mind that I was mentally exhausted “

Making viewers laugh was a welcome change of pace.

“I just love comedy and could see myself trying to make something funny,” said Lee. “So, even though it is really a serious story and features serious situations, that kind of comedy gives people some kind of release.”

Casting was not going to be easy. He sent the script to a few actresses and found that it wasn’t an easy sell. The script was funny, but the topic risked controversy.

“Most of the actresses turned it down because this story is a sexy comedy,” said Lee. “They all said oh, it’s going to be really fun to watch, but I’m sorry. So, okay, Ji-hyun also read it and actually called me and asked to have a meeting.”

A rising star in Korea, Park appeared in the dramas Reborn Rich, Yumi’s Cells and Flex-X Cop.

“I was surprised to find out how openminded she was,” said Lee.

Once Park signed on to the project, he sent the script to Choi Si-won (She Was Pretty, My Fellow Citizens, Love Is For Suckers). They had a meeting and Choi was on board. Ultimately they had a great time collaborating.

“The three of us really got close to each other,” said Lee. “We had a script meeting and then we talked about the script and the scenes and locations. Some of the things they brought up did not make it to the final film, but we shot many of the ideas they brought up.”

The 10-year-old script required more significant updates than finding new locations. The last decade has seen some cultural shifts in perspective. Ten years ago it’s not likely that a Korean film would have featured women talking about sexual encounters, but that’s what Dan-bi needs to listen to so she can find her calling. While still hoping to realize her dreams of writing children’s books, Dan-bi accidentally runs her bike into the expensive car owned by a publisher. He wants damages, an exorbitant amount not covered by her salary, so she agrees to write erotica for him, using the stories her friends share about their intimate encounters.

A decade ago men might have discussed sexual encounters in a film, said Lee, perhaps, but not girls, at least not in Korean films. According to Lee, having the women discuss their fantasies and adventures makes the film more relatable to a modern audience.

“In the original version of the script they don’t talk much to each other, so I just wanted to bump up the relationship to each other,” said Lee. “The original script didn’t focus as much on the women and their point of view. That original script is more attached to the story of the father and daughter. So I wanted to make it more like the woman is the main character. It’s more about finding herself, knowing what she wants to do.”

At first Dan-bi struggles with writing erotica but then discovers she’s really good at crafting this very different kind of fairy tale. She enlists the help of her co-worker Jeong-seok, played by Choi to read her stories and tell her how effective they are. While dispassionately discussing new ways to excite her readers they slowly fall in love. Their relationship seems quite G-rated compared to her X-rated stories. It makes for an endearing and ironic twist yet it wasn’t necessarily planned that way. About 30 minutes of footage wound up being deleted.

“There were quite a few deleted scenes that we had to take out from the original footage,” said Lee. “More scenes depicting the progression of the relationship between the two characters. For example, there’s a scene where they spend their first night together, but that had to be unfortunately deleted from the final edit. So there’s another scene that I really liked, which is when they’re walking in the park and they kiss. They start kissing, and that part is in the film, but there’s more of what happens after that. So they start kissing passionately and one thing leads to another. There’s a moment when they actually charge into a public bathroom and they spend just the entire night there. That is also deleted. So it can seem like the progression is slow.”

Lee did have to worry that his film about censorship might be censored.

“So really the whole process was really a process of balancing out what was too much, what was too little, how would we be able to maintain what we wanted while also balancing out the different tones and colors.”

The Youth Protection Team at Korea’s Communications Standards Commission really exists and it’s only a short walk from the director’s house.

“I actually met the people who work there, saw how they work, but obviously there’s just too much content out there to look out for individually,” he said. “So what they usually do is people will submit complaints—parents or Internet users—they’ll say, ‘I think this is violating such and such.’ And so they will be checking those reports. But the actual workload, I will say is pretty heavy because those things come in constantly and so they need to keep checking the list.”

Forbidden Fairytale passed Korea’s censors with flying colors and opened at the New York Asian Film Festival on July 13.

“Because we thought there could be issues in terms of those standards, we actually submitted for review,” said Lee. “We were thinking maybe middle schoolers would be able to watch this. So we submitted it for a 15 and up viewing criteria, but we ended up getting 18.”

It takes a while for Dan-bi to accept where her talents lie and feel proud of her creations. While writing adult content may be looked down, Lee notes that looking at it is popular everywhere and writing such content can be lucrative.

“It’s interesting because even the protagonist looks down on it herself and goes through a journey of changing her viewpoint,” said Lee. ” I think ultimately the story that we’re trying to tell is that being diverse is not good or bad. We’re not trying to make value judgements on it if we’re just saying that everyone has different likes and dislikes and that should be respected. I think especially in the day and age we live in, I feel like we should have that sense of tolerance and even acceptance for different preferences and different viewpoints.”

Lee describes making the comedy as a joyful experience. His favorite scenes involved Dan-bi and her two best friends.

“I do really love the scene of the three friends, three women friends talking about their sexual experiences,” he said. “These talks are usually depicted among men and how men are talking about the women they’ve slept with and they’re in sort of an objectifying manner. I wanted to flip that and say, no, this is a conversation that also women can have and women should have. So that is one of my favorite scenes.”

His next film will also feature the female perspective. It centers on the story of a female boxing promoter who worked in the industry during the 80s and promoted other boxers.

“Back in the eighties, Korean patriarchy was alive and well, even more so than now it was a very, very male dominated society. Within that context, you have this woman who is probably the only woman in this very male dominated boxing society, and she is very justice oriented, social justice oriented and very fair-minded. She literally cooks for these kids who are trying to become boxers. She’s literally bringing them up from the beginning of their careers into their professional careers. The title for now is The Promoter. I’m working on the script.”

Forbidden Fairytale airs on Viki.com on July 24.