I'm a Cyborg

(Cert 15)

2 / 5

I'm a Cyborg
I'm a Cyborg: Park Chan-wook shows a softer side
  1. I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK (Saibogujiman Kwenchana)
  2. Production year: 2006
  3. Country: Rest of the world
  4. Cert (UK): 15
  5. Runtime: 105 mins
  6. Directors: Park Chan-wook
  7. Cast: Choi Hee-jin, Choi Heui-jin, Jeong Ji-hun, Jung Ji-hoon, Lee Yeong-mi, Lee Young-nyeo, Lim Soo-jung, Lim Su-jeong
  8. More on this film

The reigning king of Asian extreme cinema - the South Korean director Park Chan-wook - has elected to show us his softer, caring side. What a sugary, snuggly, giggly and silly side it turns out to be. Like Takeshi Kitano, it seems Park has a weakness for a certain sort of kiddified whimsy, which might be, worryingly, an integral flipside of his talent for violence and mayhem. Discovering this flipside is an unsettling experience. The movie admittedly has an inspired opening: Young-goon (Lim Soo-young) is a profoundly depressed worker at some soul-deadening production line, making transistor radios. She has a delusional episode, jabs the aerial of one radio into her vein and apparently ingests its mechanical-electronic quality, turning herself, as she imagines, into a "cyborg". The Frankensteinian bravura of this sequence (complete with crashes of thunder and lightning) is unfortunately followed by a long, long stretch in a psychiatric institution, whose inmates are condescendingly imagined. She fantasises about shooting up the building from fingers that turn into gun-barrels. But with this softcore fantasy, Park appears to be taking very lightly the anger and alienation of people genuinely suffering from mental illness, and the origins of Young-goon's depression are not treated with any great dramatic depth. There are bizarre reveries, including a yodelling musical interlude, but this is a frustrating and unsatisfying piece of work.

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