Time

Time (2006) is one of Kim Ki-duk's most direct films and rests on a single question: what happens to love when the face it attached to is gone. Seh hee believes her partner of two years has grown bored of her. She disappears. Six months later she returns with an entirely different face and meets the same man again as a stranger. He falls for the new woman while continuing to look for the one he lost. The prevalence of cosmetic surgery in South Korea is not background here, it is the subject. Kim Ki-duk does not frame it as criticism but as a closed loop: the face changes, the problem does not. The second half proceeds through deliberate symmetry and repetition. The ending is written so that you want to start again from the beginning. Kim Ki-duk's cinema is always uncomfortable and this is no exception. Because of the abuse allegations against him, many viewers no longer watch his films at all. Decide with that in mind. It runs 97 minutes. Good for: Korean cinema, stories about obsessive relationships, and films about identity. Less good for: there is surgical imagery and sustained psychological cruelty. None of the characters are likeable and the film has no interest in fixing that.