Moebius

Kim Ki-duk's recent films have been as ugly in form as they have been in content. Moebius, his latest psychosexual drama, is no different. Shot hand-held by the director himself, it has the look of a poorly lit home-movie. We open with a wild-haired matriarch taking skewed revenge on her cheating husband by lopping off their teenage son’s penis. This mutilation sets off a series of twisted acts – including two further castrations! – which are framed, preposterously so, as a kind of Buddhist cause-and-effect cycle.

What makes Moebius more palatable than, say, Ki-duk’s similarly themed Pieta is that the South Korean bad boy peppers his film's nastiness with baroque humour. Like in earlier work 3-Iron, dialogue is eschewed, leaving this Oedipal soap-opera to play out like a Greek tragedy crossed with a slapstick body horror. It should be risible but Ki-duk’s committed cast's laser-like intensity gives his insane vision a warped grace. [Jamie Dunn]