South Korean Park Chan-wook’s heroine in this strangely sentimental movie is a young woman who thinks she is a cyborg.
She talks to vending machines, licks electric batteries instead of food and recharges herself with a transistor radio — it isn’t surprising that she’s checked into an asylum.
There she meets a charismatic kleptomaniac (Korean pop star Jeong Ji-hun) who yodels to her when she feels low and decides to steal her soul.
Park, who made the weirdly wonderful Old Boy and the Vengeance cycle, starts off in much the same swingeing vein but then relapses into the kind of romantic idea of madness that views even the most rabid patients as quite sweet, really. It’s almost charming but defiantly oddball.
However, after its eye-catching opening, I’m a Cyborg is a bit of a trial to sit through for all but devoted fans of the director. There are many of those, however, and I’m loth to put you off the work of so extraordinary a film-maker: he’s obviously tried to take a break from iron-in-the-soul stuff to have a go at a little gentleness.
I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK
Cert: 15
