TIME
Korea, 2006, 97 minutes, Colour.
Jung-woo Ha, Ji-yeoh Park.
Directed by Kim Ki-duk.
Time was directed by the prolific Korean director, Kim Ki-duk. He gained a very strong reputation both at home and abroad, with a great variety of films in subject and style, from more gentle films echoing a Buddhist tradition like Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring… As well as some quite fierce and violent films including The Isle, Mobius.
This film looks more straightforward visually, life in the contemporary Korean city.
While the title focuses on time, the film looks at a woman, seen initially planning plastic surgery and going through the operation, veiling her face, and the film going back to her story, a loving infatuation over two years with a man, their life together, their intimacy, his apartment, the visits to a restaurant and sitting in the same place.
After the surgery, she comes back as the waitress in the restaurant, strikes up an acquaintance with the man, with their repeating the outings from the past, her partly re-living the past without the man knowing, his devotion to her in the past but his attraction to the woman in the present.
Not satisfied, personally insecure, she approaches the plastic surgeon for more surgery – and to emerge to form, perhaps, a new relationship with the same man.
1. The director and his work? The range of subjects and treatment?
2. The title, the time of the action of the film, the relationship, the plastic surgery in the aftermath?
3. The city, plastic surgery, workplace, restaurant and special table, apartment? The musical score?
4. The introduction, the plastic surgery and the detail? The woman leaving, bumping into the woman, dropping her picture? This theme and scene coming back at the end?
5. The focus on the love, the relationship, love and infatuation, the man and the woman together, his life and work, his response to the woman, her love, possessiveness, yet anxiety, personal insecurity?
6. The surgery, the photo, the detail of the plan for the surgery, the surgeon and his conversation with the woman, the assistants that the operation, the change? The time for recovery? The woman masking her face?
7. The man, the disappearance of the woman, wondering, going to the restaurant, the waitress who had served them? The new waitress?
8. Going out, the venues, the repeats of the past, in the apartment, the lovemaking? The man and his continuing love for his past girlfriend? The present relationship? Assurances?
9. The woman, the audience knowing her identity, back with her partner, yet her continued anxiety, insecurity? The decision for more surgery? Her future?
