About This Film
By 1959, the influence of Hollywood in Korean cinema was in full bloom, and “A Female Boss” is a testament to the fact, something that becomes obvious even from the music and the presentation of the titles in the very beginning of the movie. However, Han Hyeong-mo‘s title is not exactly a textbook romantic comedy, since the concepts of toxic masculinity (in the way Kim Ki-duk presented it decades later), the role reversal and the eventual triumph of male domination make the film stand particularly out.
Synopsis
Yoanna is the editor of a magazine titled “The Modern Woman” and essentially, the archetype of the modern Western woman. She is rich and successful, lives in luxury that even allows her to feed her dog expensive cake, and is a hard-core feminist (a tablet above her office even states “Women are superior to men”) who has gone as far as to forbid any romantic notions in her female dominated workplace. Furthermore, and as she seems to have some issues with securing paper to print her magazine, she does not shy away from teasing Mr. Oh, a rather rich but also funny middle-aged man who seems to be in love with her, in order to manipulate him to help her with her financial issues. Her life, however, changes, when she stumbles upon Yong-ho while talking on a public phone, with the man establishing his dominance by kicking her dog and forcing her to put the phone down. An enraged Yoanna talks about the incident with her colleagues, but her chance for revenge eventually arrives, when Yong-ho appears in the office in order to apply for a job in the magazine. In distinct femme fatale fashion, Yoanna hires him in order to make his life miserable, but soon finds herself falling for the man’s rough charm and intense masculinity.
