Review for How To Use Guys With Secret Tips

Introduction

Third Window Films are my distributor of choice when it comes to films that break the mould, films that challenge preconceptions and provoke thought, and films that when you come down to it, are unlike anything you have ever seen before. 2013 was a bumper year when it came to such films, and from The Woodsman and the Rain, all the way to the Blu-ray debut of the classic Bullet Ballet; there was never a dull moment. If you’ve missed them, I highly recommend, The Woodsman and the Rain, The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck etc, The Land of Hope, See You Tomorrow Everyone, and Bullet Ballet.


So what goodies will we get in 2014? What tantalising treasures will come our way this year? Third Window Films kick things off this January with something that I would never have expected from them, something downright mainstream. Of course in this particular case, you do not want to stray too far from the societal norms, as their first film, How to Use Guys with Secret Tips, is a romantic comedy. It’s a romantic comedy from South Korea, but a romantic comedy nonetheless. You don’t want to get over-quirky when it comes to this particular genre!


Choi Bona is an assistant director in an advertising firm whose career is slowly dead-ending. Her antisocial demeanour and less than outgoing fashion sense isn’t helping matters any, and she quite understandably keeps getting passed over when it comes to career advancement, practically ignored by her fellow workers and her boss. It gets to the point where, after a hard day’s work on a shoot at a beach, featuring popular actor Lee Seung-jae (who rubs her up totally the wrong way), she falls asleep on the sand and her colleagues completely forget about her. She wakes up alone, abandoned and forgotten, and starts making her way back to the city, when she encounters an unusual van, selling all manner of self-help videos. Which is how she winds up with a complete collection of How to Use Guys with Secret Tips, flamboyantly presented by the same salesman who was working the van.


Dr Swalski has a whole lot of advice to give, some of it blindingly obvious, and some of it less so. It makes sense that actually smiling at a man will gain a degree of sympathetic attention, and when the usual battle over a taxi to work is resolved quickly in her favour using that technique, it’s time to put the rest of those wise words into action. The techniques are of even more use when it turns out that the advert has to be reshot, and Bona is put in charge of mollifying that annoying actor Lee Seung-jae. Only this time he’s less annoying to the made-over and suddenly confident Bona. In fact things progress in a wholly more positive direction. These videos may just be the key to Bona’s success in the advertising industry, only she hasn’t counted on falling in love with the guy she plans to use to get to the top!

Picture

How to Use Guys with Secret Tips is presented on this NTSC disc at 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, and with a very pleasing progressive transfer for those with compatible equipment. The image is clear throughout, detail levels are excellent, contrast is good, and the only flaw would be at the limit of the DVD format, some strobing on fine detail. How to Use Guys with Secret Tips is a wonderful comic creation, rich, with a bright palette that is warm and tends towards the primary colours. All of that comes across well on this disc, and it could only really be improved upon in high definition.

Sound

The audio comes in DD 5.1 Korean form, and you have the choice between watching the film with or without English subtitles. It’s a dialogue focussed film, but the surround really does help with a degree of ambience, and the film’s occasionally quirky soundtrack. It’s not often you get Pavarotti and Spaghetti Western themes in the same film. The only niggle is a poorly placed layer change. The subtitles are accurately timed, but there are one or two small typos, the sort that get through spell-check, but don’t quite scan due to missing letters or spaces.

Extras

The film presents its content with animated menus, coupled with music that is a little too loud in comparison to the rest of the disc.

On the disc, you get the film’s trailer, and in a Third Window Films trailers section, ten other trailers including the forthcoming The Boomerang Family.

The Making Of lasts 11 minutes, and offers b-roll footage taken from the shooting of the film, scenes presented in the same order as they appear in the movie, but without any other context.

Director and Cast Interviews last 9 minutes and does just what it says.

Cast Thoughts lasts 3 minutes and is a mix of interviews and b-roll footage; there is a bit of repetition here from the previous two extras.

Finally there are the weblinks.

Conclusion

A feel-good romantic comedy is the perfect note to start the New Year on, when the post-Christmas blues start to loom, along with the dispiriting return to work; which makes it great for me as I got the check disc in the first week of January. I’ve got my happy-happy joy-joy back thanks to this film, although everyone else will have to wait till the final week of January to get their silver disc of quick-fix therapy. Third Window Films have picked a delightful film to start off the 2014 campaign, and as so often happens when you see a familiar genre through a less familiar lens, this particular romantic comedy feels fresh, funny and schmaltz free.


That’s despite it being the direct antithesis of the Mel Gibson vehicle from a few years ago, What Women Want. There his misogynistic advertising exec got a magical zap that gave him an insight into the minds of the fairer sex, and an unfair advantage to boot. That got him climbing the rungs of a career ladder that was becoming increasingly weighted towards women, if not actual women, then people who could understand them. And of course true love got in the way of career ambition.


In How to Use Guys with Secret Tips, we get the reverse, with the Korean advertising industry still a male dominated medium, and the young female assistant director Choi Bona increasingly sidelined by her refusal to play the game to get ahead. The more she tries to succeed on her own merit, the more she becomes isolated, and the more she retreats behind a hooded, frumpy, and grumpy facade. All of that changes when she picks up the definitive How To guide when it comes to using men to climb the career ladder. This is no figurative magical zap to the head, but with the appearance of the van seller and the programme presenter’s uncanny ability to know what she’s thinking, there’s still no little magic to this little maguffin. Her sudden increase in self confidence and ability to wrap men around her finger offers much in the way of comedy.


It wouldn’t be a rom-com without the romance, and her relentless climb to the top eventually becomes derailed when she falls for the very guy she was planning to use. True love beckons, after all manner of comic hi-jinks and ritual humiliation on both sides, but as in every romantic comedy, just when all seems roses, it’s contractually obliged for the plot to thrust a hockey stick in the path of romance. It is perhaps the most predictable moment in the film, that Bona’s little how to manual gets discovered, but only after such trials are overcome can true love really blossom.


Saying that a romantic comedy is predictable is stating the obvious to the nth degree, but How to Use Guys with Secret Tips isn’t tremendously original either. It makes up for it though with an energetically paced, engaging plot, delightful lead characters and an enthusiastic supporting cast. The film is visually inventive and has a Technicolor appeal to it that really makes it stand out. And it’s the twist of a romantic comedy made for another audience, fulfilling different expectations when it comes to humour and societal mores, which give this film such a fresh feel. It may not be original, but it definitely feels original.