Fantasia Report: Time Review

Time is the story of Seh-hee and Ji-woo, a young couple two years into their relationship. Though he never acts on his impulses Ji-woo has something of a roving eye and Seh-hee is intensely jealous and fearful that Ji-woo will soon lose interest and leave her. Believing that Ji-woo is bored with seeing the same, boring her all the time Seh-hee takes drastic action, leaving him without warning and having drastic cosmetic surgery, taking on a new face, which she hopes to use to snare him again, under an assumed identity, once she has healed. But when Ji-woo shows interest in this new and "improved" Seh-hee it triggers only more self doubt and loathing. After all, he may love the 'new' girl, but does this mean that he has rejected the old? Seh-hee is utterly trapped in her own insecurities, a situation that prompts Ji-woo to take drastic action of his own.

Time is a furious salvo launched at the cosmetic and image marketing industries, a vicious attack both on the women who take these artificial conepts of beauty seriously and at the companies who exploit them. Kim is absolutely livid at the lengths people will go to to attain beauty and, even moreso, at the twisting and corruption of the human spirit that results. "She must really love you," someone comments to Ji-woo after one of Seh-hee's out of control jealous outbursts, a statement delivered so glibly that it slides by almost without notice but this is surely one of Kim's key points: if that's love, who in their right mind would want it? If loving yourself or someone else involves these extremes then love must surely be one of the most destructive forces on the planet. This isn't love at all, Kim is arguing, but a sick obsession that is gnawing away and destroying people.

While you can't help but admire the sheer force of Kim's convictions here Time is marred by the same basic issue that plagues most of the films in the first half of Kim's career, namely that all of the principal characters are such horrible people that they are distasteful to watch. The beauty and grace of 3 Iron and Spring, Summer ... is entirely absent here, this is all vitriol and self loathing played out on the broadest possible scale with no subtlety whatsoever. Seh-hee and Ji-woo are less believable characters than they are basic types for Kim to pack all of his anger into. As a result while Kim's point is certainly heard the film makes for difficult viewing as you simply want these people to go away and Kim to stop yelling at you when a civil conversation or legitimately tragic story would get the job done just as well as this angry rant.