Time (2006)

Korean filmmaker, Kim Ki-duk, wrote and directed this creepy drama. However, the director may not want us to view it as a drama. Maybe it supposed to be classified as “thriller,” or “romantic comedy” or just “romantic.” But I digress and will address that later.

The premise of Time is actually quite brilliant and genuinely creepy. Ji-Yeon Park plays Seh-hee – an extremely jealous girlfriend. After an outburst in a coffee shop where she accused her boyfriend Ji-woo, played by Jung-woo Ha, of looking at other women, we find that the couple has problems intimately. Seh-hee tries to solve this problem by asking him to think of her as another woman. It works to solve their intimacy issues, but causes a whole slew of other issues, making her more self-conscious to the point where she consistently drones about her “boring face.” She covers it with a blanket to make herself appear anonymous. It frustrates Ji-woo who explains to a pal later that it’s “just time” that makes him look at other women – not a growing disinterest in his current lover.

Soon after, Seh-hee disappears. Her apartment is cleared out, all communications have been cut and nobody has heard from her. We see her in a plastic surgeon’s office asking for a new face. This new face appears at the coffee shop as a cute new waitress similarly named See-hee and “meets” Ji-Yeon. See-hee, now played by Hyeon-a Seong, also runs into Ji-Yeon at a sculpture garden the original couple frequented. Eventually, they become an item, although Ji-Yeon has reservations, worried that his old girlfriend would return and he would have to make a decision.

This sets off See-hee (in the same coffee shop as the original outburst), and persuades her to reveal her old identity to him at the coffee shop later by wearing a cutout of her original face. This was the only part in the movie that writer Ki-duk uses complete strangers in a setting to help tell the story. They ask if it is a theatric – this woman wearing a paper mask greeting her boyfriend. A fight ensues with both See-hee/She-hee and the stranger. Ji-yeon is frustrated, confused and comes up with a solution that is equally as erratic.Do not worry, I won’t spoil it for you.

The movie becomes cyclical. The opening seen shows a woman leaving a plastic surgery clinic with Seh-hee bumping into her, making the woman drop her “before” photo. Seh-hee offers to fix it and says she’ll be right back. The final shows this same image – See-hee leaving the clinic, dropping her “before” photo when bumped into by a girl.

The main problem with this film was that Ki-duk was too ambitious for the film’s good, mostly with the art-direction. Ultimately, I was lost as to what the actual message was – if it is a social commentary on relationships and image or a quirky solution to an age old problem. There is just a point where I asked “What the…”

The cinematography was stunning, but not as a whole. There was little cohesion from scene to scene.

In one particularly art-house styled scene, Ji-Yeon is in a room showing See-hee some photos he had secretly taken of her. They are on opposite sides of the screen. He turns off the lights. Click. It’s dark. Click. We see they have moved closer. Click. It’s dark. Click. They have moved even closer to each other.

While it was a cinematically interesting scene, it fit nowhere in the movie. It ended up looking ridiculous when melded with the surrounding scenes. There were several other experiments similar to this randomly thrown in the movie. In Ki-duk’s defense, most of the last hour of this movie steered itself closer to art-house stylings.

I did love the scene where Ji-woo is drunk and singing karaoke with a prostitute on his arm while mourning the disappearance of Seh-hee. It is one of the more sentimental moments in the movie.
It was an extremely entertaining movie, but at the same time I was completely frustrated with the lack of cohesion. It was a great story in and of itself, however. Because of its ambition, I left the movie pondering for hours about the psychology behind it. I also left it mumbling about crappy cohesion, lousy karaoke singing… but what an interesting film.