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A Major Disappointment

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

"I was scared of time…time that makes everything change". Who are we? We all possess multiple identities in today's society, as sons/daughters, friends, employees, mother/father, etc. As time evolves and our roles change, societies perception of who we are also changes. This also holds true with love, can it hold through the passage of time, especially in today's superficial, instantly gratified society? Ki-Duk Kim addresses this question in Time, a disturbingly beautiful reflection on love in today's skin-deep world. Certain that her boyfriend, Ji-Woo, is growing tired of her physically, See-hee leaves him, only to re-appear six- months later with a new face. As she makes Ji-Woo fall in love with her all over again, the film raises many psychological and physiological points about our collective traits as human beings. As the vessel that holds our soul begins to decay, it's realized that we cannot stop the hands of time. Thus, we become fixated upon physical beauty…the insecurity that drives us to achieve our own perfection, while also seeking physical perfection in another, keeping us searching for the personality traits we desire wrapped in a beautiful shell. In the end, we are never truly gratified, it's our confusion between lust and love, and the obsession with physical beauty that makes Time a relevant film. Disturbing, yet seemingly rooted in reality, both characters underlying paranoia is certainly a reflection on our insecurity of being rejected, used, or replaced by another, and society as a whole. In the end, it should be the baring of our soul that should attract us to one another, not our bare body.

In combining elements of sci-fi and fantasy with a thoughtful, contemplative study of human relationships, the Korean film, "Time," brings the adage "Beauty is only skin deep" to a whole new level.When she begins to sense that her boyfriend, Ji-woo, may be losing interest in her, Seh-hee decides to undergo plastic surgery so radical that even he will not be able to recognize her. Her plan is to then insinuate herself back into Ji-woo's life under the guise of her new identity, hoping to stave off his growing indifference and, in so doing, give them what amounts to a second chance as a couple. Needless, to say, Seh-hee 's scheme does not work out quite as planned and she learns some pretty powerful lessons about the way true love actually works.Although Seh-hee clearly believes that by altering her appearance she will be able to change her inner makeup as well, the truth is that she remains every bit as grasping, jealous, melodramatic and paranoid after the surgery as she was before. No amount of change in her looks can raise her self-esteem or make her any less difficult to deal with. Her boyfriend, meanwhile, becomes a pawn in her twisted game, as he is tricked into inadvertently rekindling a romance with a woman who carries with her all the same baggage he had so much trouble putting up with in the previous relationship (despite the fact that he genuinely loves her).An attack on the looks-obsessed nature of modern culture, "Time" is not a "thriller" in the conventional sense of the term. It demands patience as it goes about the business of laying out its storyline and doesn't go in for a whole lot of fancy horror movie pyrotechnics to raise the audience's hackles. Instead, it relies mainly on subtle psychological insights to generate a feeling of imbalance and unease. Seh-hee is clearly mentally and emotionally unstable, and writer/director Ki-duk Kim's subtle, almost Pirandellian way of dealing with that madness makes it all the more disturbing. Strong performances, steady direction, sharp cinematography and an unnerving view of human nature all combine to make "Time" an offbeat, memorable experience. Don't expect to jump out of your seat or bury your face in your hands during the course of this film - for in the case of "Time," the chills all take place in the mind.

I'm a great fan of Kim Di-Kuk's classics : The Isle, Bad Guy, Samaritan Girl, and Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring. But this is gibberish. Tosh.Time is a very very poorly realised film that does not play to Kim Di-Kuk's directorial strengths. Di-Kuk is a brilliant aesthete but this movie is made in the style of a TV movie. His previous movies have been mostly silent but this film unfortunately reveals this hid a terrible ear for dialogue and a worse one for music. This is Korean TV melodrama bullshit with a little bit of token shock footage and philosophical questions shoehorned into it. This movie cheapens everything Di-Kuk has done before and if I had only seen this one I believe him to be a chauvinistic charlatan with absolutely no understanding of normal human interaction. My biggest criticism is that characters just randomly perform actions with no basis in psychology or their nature merely in order to provide neat symmetry, visual moments or convoluted plot twists. Crass

I enjoyed this film. I think that reviewers who claim it had nothing more to say than "plastic surgery is bad" are really refusing to dig critically into the themes of the film. It is about identity; it is about jealousy and fear; it is about vanity. These aren't exactly "easy" themes, and while I do think that the insanity of the heroine do make it difficult to relate to at times, the film had a lot to say that is applicable to all of us.. not just jealous nuts. That being said, I definitely viewed the film as a fable (especially because of the last scene). In some ways it reminded me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with this weird sense of starting with a clean slate.The idea of not being able to recognize a past lover is extremely disturbing to me personally, and so I might have allowed myself to get taken in by this film more than some people would. Even so, I think that the film was executed very well and deserves high marks.