The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Park Chan-wook, "I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK" (2006)

I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (Saibogujiman kwenchana). 2006. Directed by Park Chan-wook. Written by Chung Seo-kyung and Park Chan-wook. Produced by Lee Chun-yeong. Cinematography by Chung Chung-hoon. Edited by Kim Sang-bum and Kim Jae-bum. Music by Hong Dae-seong and Hong Yu-jin. Production design by Ryu Seong-hie. Costume design by Cho Sang-kyung. Sound by Jeong Jin-wook, Kim Suk-won and Kim Chang-sub.

Cast: Im Su-jeong (Cha Young-goon), Jeong Ji-hoon [Rain] (Park Il-soon), Choi Hee-jin (Choi Seul-gi), Oh Dal-soo (Shin Duk-cheon), Park Jun-myeon (Gop-dan), Kim Byeong-ok (Judge), Lee Yong-nyeo (Young-goon's mother), Yu Ho-jeong (Il-soon's mother).

Park Chan-wook's latest film, the vampire movie Thirst, which opened yesterday, was to me a supreme disappointment. Much better is his previous film, I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK, a strange and charming romantic comedy set in a mental hospital. Perhaps Thirst will do well enough to encourage an intrepid distributor to make this film available in the U.S., on DVD at the very least. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at the 2007 New York Asian Film Festival.

The oeuvre of Park Chan-wook seems designed to confound auteurists looking for a consistent directorial signature. His films are almost schizophrenically diverse: he followed up his little-seen early films Moon is the Sun's Dream (1992) and Threesome (1997) with the massive blockbuster hit Joint Security Area (2000). His next film, the grim, pitch-dark revenge film Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), confused and disappointed most audiences. However, this was the beginning of a new phase in his career, the so-called “revenge trilogy,” which continued with Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), which were much more successful, and brought him his current high international profile, culminating with the Grand Prix (second place) prize at Cannes for Oldboy.

Park’s next film, the sweet and delightfully oddball romance I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK, once again threw audiences for a loop, having now become accustomed to the ornate style of the trilogy. The result was disappointing box office returns upon its release in Korea. While the film is not quite at the level of his previous films (especially Lady Vengeance, his best to date), it contains charms enough of its own, and a unique visual style that beautifully reflects the unhinged nature of the inhabitants of the mental asylum where practically the entire film is set.

The film’s core romance occurs between Young-goon (Im Su-jeong), a young woman convinced she is a cyborg, and consequently refusing to eat, making her alarmingly thin; and Il-soon (pop music megastar Rain), a young man who is the resident thief, stealing both physical and imaginary possessions from the other asylum inmates. Il-soon has made it his mission to cure Young-goon, and he enlists the help of the other inmates.

While I’m a Cyborg may at first seem like a radical departure for Park, it’s not as dissimilar from his previous films as one would think. Park’s regular cinematographer Jeong Jeong-hoon provides the film with a bright pop-art palette that enhances the fantastical nature of the proceedings. Young-goon’s violent revenge fantasies where she transforms herself into a literal killing machine, mowing down the “white suits” en masse, shooting them with bullets out of her index fingers, provides the sort of bloody scene we have seen before from Park (although done here with a hint of self-parody).

The film’s tone is a strange mixture of whimsicality and darker elements. Young-goon’s habits, such as talking to her fellow machines (a vending machine, lamps, and other electrical objects) and “charging” herself by licking batteries in lieu of actual nourishment, are presented as charming eccentricities. However, the scenes where she is force fed and given shock treatment are rather more disturbing. The asylum setting, much as it does in such previous films as Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (as well as Ken Kesey’s novel), and James Mangold’s Girl, Interrupted, lends itself to social commentary, the asylum being an all too apt metaphor for the world at large, especially how people are subjected to harsh societal control by those in authority. Young-goon and Il-soon’s disorders are caused by their family histories: Young-goon witnessed her grandmother forcibly committed when she was younger, and Il-goon’s parental abandonment created his desire to disappear, rendered visually in scenes where other people dwarf him as he becomes ever smaller.

Park creates a compellingly fantastic universe in I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK, confirming his status as one of cinema’s supreme stylists.

Trailer:

The first ten minutes:

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Park Chan-wook, "Thirst" (2009)

Thirst (Bakjwi). 2009. Directed by Park Chan-wook. Written by Park Chan-wook and Chung Seo-kyung, based on the novel "Thérèse Raquin" by Émile Zola. Produced by Park Chan-wook and Ahn Soo-hyun. Cinematography by Chung Chung-hoon. Edited by Kim Sang-bum and Kim Jae-bum. Music by Cho Young-uk. Production design by Ryu Seong-hie. Costume design by Cho Sang-kyung. Sound design by Kim Suk-won and Kim Chang-sub.

Cast: Song Kang-ho (Sang-hyun), Kim Ok-vin (Tae-ju), Kim Hae-sook (Madame Ra), Shin Ha-kyun (Kang-woo), Park In-hwan (Father Noh), Oh Dal-soo (Young-du), Song Young-chang (Seung-dae), Mercedes Cabral (Evelyn).

Park Chan-wook’s latest film, the vampire movie Thirst (opening in U.S. theaters today), claims as its literary pedigree Émile Zola’s classic novel Thérèse Raquin. The combination of this lofty source material with a lurid tale of a priest turned vampire who eagerly, though not without pangs of conscience, succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh, is an irresistible (to some) confluence of highbrow art and lowbrow exploitation. This perhaps made it inevitable that it would win a prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival – it won the Jury Prize (third place), shared with Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank. The film’s protagonist, Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) is a devout priest who regularly gives last rites to terminal patients at a hospital. His daily exposure to the dying makes him long to do more to alleviate the suffering he sees daily. To that end, he travels to an unnamed African country to subject himself to an experiment that is meant to develop a vaccine for a mysterious disease called the “Emmanuel Virus.” He comes down with this virus, the main symptoms of which are coughing up blood and breaking out in large pustules on the skin. He dies as a result, but is miraculously brought back to life by a blood transfusion that turns him into a vampire. Sang-hyun still carries the virus, but when he drinks blood, his lesions and boils disappear. Upon his return to Korea, he becomes a legend as the sole survivor of the experiment, and people believe he has great healing powers and implore him to cure them. At the hospital, Sang-hyun has a chance meeting with Kang-woo (Shin Ha-kyun), an old childhood friend. Kang-woo, who has an unspecified mental disability, lives at home with his mother (Kim Hae-sook) and his wife Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin), who was taken in by his mother as an orphaned child, and has since become a slave to the family. Tae-ju longs for escape from her circumstances, forced to be both wife and mother to Kang-woo and having to listen to the sentimental old Korean tunes her mother-in-law plays incessantly. Tae-ju tempts the priest into breaking his vows of chastity, in sex scenes that have become a major selling point of the film. Later, she finds out he is a vampire – initially repulsed by this, she becomes drawn in, and latches onto this as her means of liberation from her domestic prison.

In Thirst, Park supplies all the elements of his previous films that have pleased audiences and divided critics: the copious gushing blood, the rending of flesh, and the baroque style that were hallmarks of his so-called “revenge trilogy” – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance. After a brief thematic departure with the oddball and very charming mental hospital romantic comedy I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK, he returns to his previous mode with this new film. In a way, Thirst combines elements of both the revenge trilogy and I’m a Cyborg. Comic elements combine with the bloody vampire tale to very unsettling and disorienting effect – it becomes a different film from scene to scene, and sometimes minute to minute. At one point it’s a somber religious parable; at another it is a blackly absurdist domestic comedy; at yet another it is a Double Indemnity-style film noir; at still another it is a distinctly Korean melodrama (although heightened to parodic effect). Unfortunately, on the evidence of this new film, Park’s style is beginning to yield diminishing returns. The film is all over the place tonally, and the wildly disparate elements on display – reflected in the film’s production design, a chaotic East-meets-West mélange of brightly-colored hanbok (Korean traditional clothing), designs inspired by French artist Odilon Redon, and colonial-era Japanese architecture – never jell into anything substantial.

We’ve seen the vampire tale many times before in the cinema, and in the past this has resulted in some very haunting and beautiful films, for example Dreyer’s Vampyr and Nosferatu (both the Murnau and Herzog versions). All the familiar vampire folklore, such as aversion to sunlight, sleeping in a coffin, the search for human blood, is replicated in Thirst, albeit with significant modifications. The vampire’s repulsion by garlic would presumably not have made sense in a Korean context, garlic being such an essential component to Korean food. Park adds a twist by having his protagonist be a priest, whose transformation into a vampire through a blood transfusion is the beginning of his passage from faithful servant of God to animalistic hell-bound vampire. (The Korean title of the film is “Bat.”) Of course, since the vampire in this story is a priest, fear of the cross doesn’t come into play. This idea has great potential – the struggle between dedication to his faith and the urges that are a result of his transformation promises to be very compelling. However, Park never takes this scenario anywhere beyond this high concept idea; there is such an arch air to the proceedings that it all ultimately becomes incredibly hollow and superficial. This is certainly not the fault of any of its performances – the film boasts some very strong supporting actors, and while Song Kang-ho is always compelling to watch (although he is restrained by Park and co-writer Chung Seo-kyung’s muddled script), the true revelation here is Kim Ok-vin (Dasepo Naughty Girls, Voice), transforming herself into a sexy and lithe live-wire who embodies her sexually awakened character with gusto and energetic brio. A word to the wise: those expecting extended torrid sex scenes between Park and Kim will be sorely disappointed; as is usually the case in film publicity, this aspect of the film was ridiculously over-hyped, both during and after production.

The main problem with Thirst, even beyond its overlong repetition and slack pace, is that there is never any real internal struggle evident in the character of Sang-hyun; he succumbs quite easily to sin – too easily. This superficiality extends to just about everything else we see – since there is very little at stake for anyone, it is very hard to care about any of the characters or what happens to them. This was certainly not the case with the revenge trilogy; despite Park being vilified from many corners for his depictions of extreme violence, this was in the service of a serious engagement with the moral issues explored in the films. In Thirst, Park seems content with having his characters be merely pieces on a chessboard, puppets to be moved around in ways that clearly amuses him, but precious little of that translates to us in the audience. Thirst, in the end, is all style and very little substance.