MUBI

A young woman who believes she’s a cyborg hears voices and harms herself while at work making radios. She’s hospitalized in a mental institution where she eats nothing and talks to inanimate objects. She’s Young-goon, granddaughter of a woman who thought she was a mouse (and whose dentures Young-goon wears) and a mother who’s a butcher without much social grace. Young-goon comes to the attention of Il-sun, a ping-pong playing patient at the institution who makes it his goal to get her to eat. Will he succeed? Which way does sanity lie?

This is a crazy film that if you are not following or on it’s wavelength by the first third of the movie . You are not going to enjoy the rest.

The film certainly stays creative and sweet throughout more like a fantasy that is colorful and quirky. It seems to coast on that alone. While trying to come into some kind of reality. It quickly realizes it’s best to stay on the farcical road, especially since it is mainly a comedy.

This is Chan-Wook Park’s first film after the vengeance trilogy of OLDBOY, SYMPATHY FOR MR.VENGENCE and LADY VENGENCE. This is a welcome departure that is more light-hearted. Not as down trodden. While allowing for a violent scene or two though played much lighter then it could have been.

I would compare the film to AMELIE with it’s surreal visuals, Fast pacing, Main characters who are on a single minded mission yet who carry an innocence. The movie is still not suitable for kids. Only AMELIE while more totally a fantasy which this film is also not only has a payoff, but more of a narrative coherence. This film is a bit hard to follow as we jump in and out of fantasy that the film allows us to get lost in as well as the patients.

The film has a great introduction that misleads the audience yet seems to work to illuminate the story to us and throw us into the action. Leaving the film to be a bit confusing as to whether the other patient also delve into the delusion s of each other or even see each other as equals yet still a bit off.

I found myself admiring the male lead as it seemed at first like he overcame his mind state to help cure the female lead and morph hers into what will help her stay healthy, yet let her stay in her delusion in safe way. If this were a film about real mental illness while sweet it could be seen as sweetly wrong as he makes her more or less dependent on him .Since she believes she is a robot it seems she might not have a choice as he is the engineer for her.

Though he continues in his delusions only adds her disability to his though he knows. She is human he can get lost in her delusions.

This is a film that is more magical then it can totally explain. it’s to be seen and experienced.

You also are left to marvel at the filmmaking, the imagination and skill that went into making this film the original concoction that it is. The filmmaking and never takes you out of the film. Now whimsical and weird isn’t always when it comes to films for me. Here it worked to a degree. Though it’s a wonderful world to visit. I wouldn’t want to live there and the visit seemed a bit long. The film could have been cut by 10 -15 minutes as it feels like it wears out it’s welcome.

SPOILER

A lot of people dislike the ending. I dislike it as well. Their isn’t really one. This film which has been so inventive up to this point. Begins a build up towards the end only to peter out into nothing while it is sweet. It is also a disappointment. When the film was coasting on so much goodwill and invention.

END SPOILER

GRADE: B-

While watching this, I couldn’t help but think on other films that had caused for me a similar vibe, namely Takashi Miike’s “The Happiness of the Katakuris” and, well, actually any film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It has a whimsical, demented, determined happiness that you are either on board with from the beginning or not.
After the Vengeance trilogy and “Thirst”, it’s not what i was expecting, and if anything I was pleasantly surprised. A story about retribution for the ones we love even when no one, including ourselves, seem to understand. Park Chan-wook seems to always be contemplating those circumstances outside ourselves that force us into the choices we make. “I’m a Cyborg…” is definitely his most lighthearted prism to date, and consequently his most accessible.