I'm a Cyborg but That's OK (2006)

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS blew me away, when I saw it three years ago. It is - hands down - the most exciting and scary korean horror thriller i've yet seen. And main actress Lim Su-jeong was so good I tried to follow her career. But, alas, somehow she fell beneath my radar with movies like …ING and SAD MOVIE, that just weren't my cup of coffee. So it was quite a revelation to find her in Park Chan-wook's new movie, playing a mentally ill girl who thinks, she's a cyborg. But that's OK, because she's the best cyborg (or nutcase) I've seen for a long time.
The movie's title contains most of the premise of the tale, Park Chan-wook tells: The young girl Young-goon is checked into a mental ward, after she tries to connect herself with an electricity cable. There she won't eat anything but only licks at batteries, because, you see, she's a cyborg, and cyborg don't eat but get charged by electricity. Sadly she is slowly starving to death in this way....
The ward is filled with excentric and colourful nutcases - probably not very realistically but funny and interesting to look at. There's a guy who is so humble that he only walks backward (protocol at the royal court, someone explains) and then there's a woman who views her surroundings only via a mirror and who likes to sing folk music from the swiss alps (including yodeling). And then there's a young man (played by K-Pop star Rain) who mostly wears a bunny mask and who is considered a thief by all the patients. But he not only steals things but also skills and characteristics. For instance he steals the humble behaviour of the above mentioned patient, who becomes very forward until he gets his stolen attributes back. Il-soon, the thief, is fascinated with our cyborg girl who speaks to electric appliances, while wearing the dentures of her granny. And Young-goon is attracted by the thief because she wants him to steal her sympathy and compassion. For Young-goon wants to kill all "white 'uns", all doctors and nurses, because they put her granny into a mental ward. And she will kill them with the machine guns that are built into her finger tips, as soon as she can fully charge herself with electricity.
Hm, nearly sounds like another entry in Park's "Vengeance"-Series, doesn't is?
Well, it isn't. Instead it is a sweet, disturbing, funny touching movie about the relationship of two mentally ill people. While it isn't very realistic in it's description of mental illness and the causes of the defects of the protagonists, it depicts them and their very own world(s) very detailled and without discrimination. Il-soon's character was the most fascinating for me: He knows that Young-goon is loony and tries to help her. But at the same time he is able to accept her loony world and can see with her eyes.
The concept of reality and the very subjective and personal understanding of it by different people seems to be the main interest for Park Chan-wook in this movie. And he obvioulsy enjoys very much to show us the realities of his protagonists in bizarre and totally over the top scenes that only happen in the heads of Young-goon and Il-soon. There are no thriller elements in this story, like you would expect them from the director of JSA and OLD BOY, but the movie does have it's scary and even bloody moments, and they are an important part of the story. But the core of the film are Young-goon's and Il-soon's reception of the world and their tentative opening up to each other.
A last word about the actors: Rain does a very credible job (his popstar charisma fits perfectly with his likable character) and the other patients are fabilous as well. But Lim Su-jeong just owns this movie with her tour de force performanc. She is absolutely perfect and you can't help falling in love with her character. I'm very happy to have "found" the girl from A TALE OF TWO SISTERS again, and I hope I will see much for of her in the future.