Fridae

Writer-director Kim Ki-Duk is unstoppable. He has been churning one film after another for almost a decade now and shows no signs of slowing down. His name is also becoming recognizable among moviegoers worldwide after successful recent offerings like 3-Iron and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring.

In his bold and poetic new film, he takes a blowtorch to the cosmetic industry and our mad obsession with becoming beautiful. The film is a sharp criticism of the popularity of plastic surgery in Korea where some 50% of women in their 20s have gone under the knife.

Park Ji-Yeon plays a woman who is insecure about her looks, especially when she keeps catching her boyfriend (Ha Jeong-Woo) looking at other women. After two years together, she decides to disappear without telling him and undergo cosmetic surgery. Ha is initially heartbroken. But six months later, he meets an attractive waitress (Seong Hyeon-Ah) whom he falls for, but later suspects to be his former ex-girlfriend.

The film explores a multitude of issues with regards to love, beauty and self-respect: How far would you go to attain beauty? Is physical perfection the surest way of finding true love? What price do you pay for changing who you are in order to hang on to your lover? This is a film to think about long after the credits roll and the lights come up.