I Can't Eat This

Archive for the ‘The Meaning of Life’ Category

Intro Edition Asien -- Vol. 1 -- Saibogujiman kwenchana (South Korea 2006)

Commercial quote from intro.de:
Kinky, disrespectful fairy tale of two isolated souls, which breaks the dimension of the imaginable.

The film: Young-gun (Lim Soo Jung) believes to be a Cyborg. In a psychiatric clinic she meets Il-sun (Jung-Ji-hoon), who believes he can steal abilities from other people. Their fantastic romance leads them over the clouds, in a bed pulled by ladybirds, nevertheless it never loses relation to reality.

The director: Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”) is known for his revenge trilogy. “I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK” should’ve become his first romantic comedy. The result has amazed himself. Last but not least for this enchanting pleading for love the Korean director has to be one of the outstanding directors of Asian cinema.

So much for intro magazine’s sleevenotes. I just can say: This is the first movie I watched from this series and still the best one for me. If it’s for the camera work, the story, the special effects, or the performance of the actors (ok, a little overacting here and there) it get’s 10/10 points in all.
Right at the start at the movie I was amazed when the credits are written on little mechanical parts and signs in a factory, shown by a camera move all over them. This factory is where the first scene takes place. You can see several workplaces from above where they put transistor-radios together. You hear, what I first thought was a radio commentary, but is a spoken work instruction instead. Then camera zooms to Young-gun’s workplace and the instruction tells her to connect herself to the transistor radio, and she does! This is a little bloody and with that she will fall off her chair. A few scenes later we’re in the psycho hospital where she will meet Il-sun and other strange characters.

Strange and nice to see also is that Young-gun thinks she cannot and does not have to eat anything (because she thinks she’s a Cyborg, remember?), but just has to hold a battery between her forefingers to load herself up with energy. Crazy shit!
Then there are the outstanding dream sequences, which remind me of the things Terry Gilliam does. In one of them scenes Young-gun morphs into a killer-robot with gun-barrels in her fingertips and an ammunition magazine in her mouth. There she runs berserk!

So that you won’t think that this movie is just about crazy things (oh, but it IS) with blood and violence, let me tell you that it is also silly, romantic and a little magic. In a few scenes I choked on laughter, maybe you will, too?

If you can’t get the intro-DVD in your country, open your eyes for the UK, Hongkong, South Korean or Thailand version.
Maybe available at amazoon, but better check out your local dealer instead.

I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK at imdb.com