Trailer (I actually watched it in English, but didn’t find a trailer in English.):
Hwang Jin Yi, meanwhile, is a 2007 movie about the titular Joseon Gisaeng. The movie was incredibly beautiful, but could have been better than it was. While I would expect a movie about a courtesan with famous love affairs to at least somewhat also focus on the men in her life, this really was mostly about the Boyfriend and her being a tragic figure. While Hwang Jin Yi’s famous intellect is present, we only really get glimpses of her wit and poetry, and there’s nary a dance or other artistic endeavor in sight. And…well, it isn’t fair all to compare 2 ½ hour movie to a 24-and-change hour movie, but I couldn’t help but regularly compare it to the 2006 TV version, which is one of my favorite kdramas, and possibly the best kdrama I’ve seen. And, of course, I couldn’t help but think about how, there, the men are present, but it was really a story about a woman and her love for her art, which she could only really have in her life the way she wanted it if she was a courtesan.
Which is not to say that the movie isn’t still pretty good, but it could have been better.
Trailer (I would not have chosen most of these scenes myself. The sexual assault at the beginning of the trailer is actually an attempted rape of her maid that Jin Yi stops.):
ETA: Fun tidbit for those following the current kdrama season: Hwang Jin Yi's working name-both historically and in in both versions I've seen-was Myung-Wol.