Time
After seeing Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring, Samaritan Girl, and 3-Iron, while avoiding the widely-panned The Bow, I must have been spoiled on Kim Ki-duk. Those first three are recognizably his best-received efforts, and are nearly devoid of the unsympathetic rawness of his early work. When watching his latest film, Time, I suppose I expected something entirely separate from what I saw. Nowhere to be found is the quiet meditative-ness of 3-Iron and Spring, or the heartbreaking morals of Samaritan Girl. Instead, this is a frantic study of characters that are hardly relatable. A half-hearted expose of plastic surgery culture, that doesn’t seem to have a handle on what it wants to say. Time is kind of like a train going much too fast, and in the wrong direction to boot. Which is to say, it’s impossible not to stare at it and be simultaneously frightened and fascinated.
The story, set against the sleek and achingly hip backdrop of downtown (presumably) Seoul, throws us into the loving-but-mildly-stale relationship of Seh-hee (Ji-Yeon Park, of two Whispering Corridors flicks) and her boyfriend Ji-woo (Jung-woo Ha). They’ve been together for two years, and Ji-woo has acquired a harmless, but hurtful roving eye that—not five minutes into the movie—sends Seh-hee into an over the top jealous rage. She’s paranoid that he’s going to get sick of her “same old boring face,” and eventually leave her. So, in a ridiculous preemptive strike, she disappears and has her mug reformed to be unrecognizable to him, before resurfacing months later (now played by Hyeon-a Seong of the Scarlet Letter) as “See-hee.”
See-hee begins showing up at the regular hang outs of her unbeknownst ex, hoping he’ll take notice of the new and improved her. He does—but is still reserving the majority of his affections for his long-lost disappearing act, Seh-hee, should she ever return. Now, even though she is Seh-hee, this drives See-hee wild—and she’s just as jealous as before. Of herself. More insane acts of unreasonable obsession ensue, until we’re violently carried to the bloody final act, which loops the entire proceedings into a nonsensical, surrealistic psychological nightmare.
Though it’s difficult to watch, given these people seem so out of touch with reality—not to mention social niceties—there are still fleeting moments of tranquil poignancy. Seeing the mentally-unstable, fragile smile on See-hee’s face as she thinks she may have a second chance to be loved by Ji-woo is touching, just as Ji-woo’s attachment to the au natural and long-gone Seh-hee is. Time is strange, brutal, and off-putting, but enthralling in the way that Extreme Makeover is. And, of course, it’s refreshing to see a depiction of having one’s skin pulled, sliced, and sewn into new shapes not having a happy ending. For all the things that can be said of Ki-duk, he’s got no shortage of compulsively intriguing ideas.
