The title of the movie is an indication that the story happens under the sign of time and periods, same as in other of Ki-duk Kim's movies like the fabulous 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring'. Here the cycle lasts six months, the time it takes for a plastic surgery patient to completely recover and for his or her external appearance to change to the limit of not being recognized even by a lover. External appearance change means that the person changed? Can plastic surgery fool love? or destiny? To what extent what we are is how we look?
This film of Kim is different in cinematography, it leaves almost completely the traditional Korea setting of other films of his and happens in the modern and futuristic Korean landscape, which even led some folks to shelve it as a science-fiction movie which it is not in my opinion. If some of the refined camera work from other movies is missing here the only exception is the statues park, where the characters come from time to time to take snapshots of themselves and of their physical changes. This very landscape which as the film progresses is more and more submerged in water, metaphor of another universe that is overtaking the reality. This universe is under water, invisible to us, like telling to not look for understanding and transparency in a world different than ours.
This is also a love story, but a cruel one, and a different one. It all starts like a soap opera, a young couple breaks away, and she decides to play the cruel game of changing her appearance to test if his love can be triggered again if physically she becomes somebody else. It so happens that his was a true love, and when she shows up at the threshold of a six month cycle he is torn between the attraction for the new relationship and the feelings for the lost and disappeared true love. When truth surfaces he is the one who tries to take revenge, but the closing of the cycle turns into tragedy. Men - women relationships can never be symmetric.
Some critics do not consider 'Shi gan' as one of Kim's best film. Well, if this is a relative failure I prefer Kim's failure to many other movies.
This film of Kim is different in cinematography, it leaves almost completely the traditional Korea setting of other films of his and happens in the modern and futuristic Korean landscape, which even led some folks to shelve it as a science-fiction movie which it is not in my opinion. If some of the refined camera work from other movies is missing here the only exception is the statues park, where the characters come from time to time to take snapshots of themselves and of their physical changes. This very landscape which as the film progresses is more and more submerged in water, metaphor of another universe that is overtaking the reality. This universe is under water, invisible to us, like telling to not look for understanding and transparency in a world different than ours.
This is also a love story, but a cruel one, and a different one. It all starts like a soap opera, a young couple breaks away, and she decides to play the cruel game of changing her appearance to test if his love can be triggered again if physically she becomes somebody else. It so happens that his was a true love, and when she shows up at the threshold of a six month cycle he is torn between the attraction for the new relationship and the feelings for the lost and disappeared true love. When truth surfaces he is the one who tries to take revenge, but the closing of the cycle turns into tragedy. Men - women relationships can never be symmetric.
Some critics do not consider 'Shi gan' as one of Kim's best film. Well, if this is a relative failure I prefer Kim's failure to many other movies.