Young Adult Matters Movie Review

This review contains spoilers, and I advise anyone who wants to watch the movie to look up a list of trigger warnings beforehand.

Young Adult Matters is a Korean Drama that came out in the year 2021. I was particularly interested in watching the movie due to the actress Lee You-Mi being the protagonist, and I loved her role in Squid Game. I went into the movie relatively blind and was left with a sense of content and confusion, to say the least. The movie has a runtime of Two Hours and Seven Minutes and did a successful job at keeping me intrigued the whole time. The protagonist Sejin is an 18-year-old high school student who gets pregnant and is seeking an abortion. The first 20 minutes or so follow her secret love affair with her lesbian bully girlfriend, only for the bully to get killed off by a crate smashing her to death. While the scene is very jarring and could have added to the story, it seemed rather unnecessary as it doesn’t address it at all afterwards. We get one scene later on in the movie where she seems to pay tribute by lighting a candle and looking at a photo of her, while Sejin squats in an empty house with her new friends she met after her girlfriend’s death. One could argue that the point was to just add more trauma or explore themes of grief, but the rest of the movie could stand alone if it wanted to. Directly after her girlfriend’s death, she goes to a diner where she meets Joo-yeong, who becomes our secondary protagonist. Joo-yeong vows to help Sejin on her quest for an abortion. From here, our main plotline is set, and they later meet two boys who also decide to help Sejin. One of the biggest complaints I see about the movie is not understanding certain scenes. I truly believe that subtitles can only go so far, and ultimately, a lot will be lost in translation, not only linguistically but culturally. There is a certain scene where one of the boys (Jae Pil) ends up trying to beat up Sejin with a rock, so Joo-yeong begs to do it instead. A lot of people didn’t understand why, but it’s simple. She knew that she wouldn’t be as rough with the rock as Jae Pil would. The film does an amazing job depicting Korean teen street and nightlife. My favorite thing about the movie was the aesthetics and lighting. Anyone who decides to watch the movie should remember to look up a list of trigger warnings, as it is a very disturbing movie and shows themes of self-harm, drugs, bullying, sexual assault, death, and miscarriage. There may be more, but that is what I remember off the top of my head. By the end of the movie, Sejin and Joo-yeong part ways. Surprisingly, this was the saddest part of the movie for me, even before her miscarriage at the end. After parting ways, she decides to give up on the abortion, having exhausted all her options. She moves in with a couple that is most likely looking to adopt her child. At the end of the movie, Sejin loses the baby, and we close out with a shot her her riding her longboard with a new hair color. The Miscarriage at the end of the movie was expected as she spent the whole movie drinking, smoking, doing drugs, and self-harming. What surprised me was that it didn’t leave me feeling sad, but rather content. Sejin spent the whole movie feeling like her only viable option was to get an abortion, and her losing it left me with a sense of relief for her. Even if she did have the help of the couple by the end, her life would still be changed. All the drinking, drugs, and self-harm she did; it would have been a miracle for the baby to be born healthy. The ending we ended up getting was a sad but much-needed. The ending allowed Sejin to potentially learn from her mistakes and have character growth.