- guardian.co.uk,
- Monday June 02 2008 11:44 BST
South Korea's best-known director as a result of his revenge trilogy and Oldboy in particular, Park Chan-Wook comes up with something entirely different with this bizarre film that's kind of a romantic comedy, or as close as Park is ever likely to get. It is by turns, surreal, captivating and baffling. Its female lead is convinced that she's a robot, so she refuses to eat, preferring to get her sustenance by licking batteries; its male lead is a young man who claims he has created a machine that converts food into electrical energy.
If that makes it sound a bit unusual, you ain't seen nothing yet: it all takes place in a mental hospital and Chan throws in yodelling, a granny on a rubber band from the sky, the carol Silent Night, adapted to be about rice and noodles, levitating and multicoloured toes. It's nicely played and the visuals by Park's regular cinematographer, Jeong-Hun Jeong, are sporadically sumptuous, but as for interpreting what it's about, you're on your own.
