I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK

I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (2006) is Park Chan-wook's Korean tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. Right after Oldboy, the director did something nobody expected: a tender, very odd love story set inside a mental hospital.

Young-goon is convinced she's a cyborg. She refuses to eat, instead "recharging" by pressing a battery to her wrist and chatting with vending machines and fluorescent lights. In her head she's plotting revenge on the orderlies who took her grandmother away. In the same ward she meets Il-soon, a young man in a homemade mask who believes he can steal other people's traits. He falls for her — and realizes that to keep her from starving, he has to convince her either to eat, or that even a cyborg can find a reason to keep going.

Im Soo-jung stars opposite pop idol Rain. Park layers fantasy sequences, drawn-on imagery and quiet sadness until the film sits somewhere between a fairy tale and a story about mental illness. It looks like nothing else he's made. Stream I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (2006) online on iFILM.