[Lee Jong-gil's Film Reading] There Is No Cinderella... Only Desire Exists

Animation Movie 'Gigigoe Seonghyeongsu'

※ This article contains many potential spoilers for the movie.

The movie 200 Pounds Beauty (2006) follows a Cinderella narrative. It tells the story of Kang Hanna (Kim Ah-joong), a "faceless singer," who achieves her dreams and love through plastic surgery. Unlike Cinderella, Kang Hanna does not rely entirely on a man. Although she experiences confusion about her identity, she ultimately transforms into a singer who finds her own voice. This is an active woman's autonomous self-realization. The self-deceptive traits that arise during this process are offset by confession.

The animated film Ghost Messenger: The Plastic Surgery starts from a similar premise as 200 Pounds Beauty. Yeji (voiced by Moon Nam-sook), who gave up her dream of becoming a ballerina due to her unattractive appearance, continues to suffer humiliation even while working as a makeup artist. Actress Miri (voiced by Kim Bo-young) badmouths her just by seeing her face. "Hey! Why didn’t you wear a mask? I said seeing your face in the morning makes me uncomfortable!" The hardship continues at home. After eating food in a home shopping commercial, her face is replicated in various forms on the internet and mocked. Comments include "So damn dirty lol," "I’d pay to unsee this pig lol, I threw up watching while eating," and "Honey, you must never get that fat~."

Yeji undergoes plastic surgery to completely change her appearance and is reborn. The men who hated her cannot take their eyes off her. Yeji enjoys the attention. She even receives a love call from an entertainment agency and becomes an actress. However, she suffers when confronted with a hallucination reflecting her original face and ends up overusing the plastic surgery serum. In pursuit of more serum, she even commits murder.

Yeji is ultimately both a victim and a perpetrator. The film precariously walks a tightrope between these opposing concepts. What pushed Yeji to the edge was society’s tendency to judge others by their appearance. The murder is close to an explosion of anger and disregard received from those very people. Yeji completely omits the confession that Kang Hanna went through. She pursues only a glamorous life amid self-deception and disguise. Therefore, the film feels more like a critique of individual desire than of the flawed mindset of appearance-based supremacy. Even the pity evoked by Yeji’s downfall is diminished.

Yeji’s murder may also be part of erasing her true self. Except for Jihoon (voiced by Jang Min-hyuk), everyone who knows about her use of the plastic surgery serum suffers. Her father (voiced by Kim So-hyung) and mother (voiced by Kang Si-hyun) reluctantly cut flesh from their daughter, whose body has melted due to serum overdose. The plastic surgery practitioner (voiced by Jo Hyun-jung) demands a huge sum of money from Yeji and is killed. A few days later, Yeji appears on a broadcast as if nothing happened. However, she faces a hallucination of her face showing side effects in the mirror. She had forgotten that among those who know the truth she wants to hide, she herself is included. The moment she realizes this, the active woman’s autonomous self-realization takes a turn toward destruction.

Ghost Messenger: The Plastic Surgery follows the Cinderella narrative even in its bizarre flow where rising self-esteem leads to madness. Yeji falls in love with Jihoon (voiced by Jang Min-hyuk), who has been glancing at her sideways since she worked as a makeup artist. His reality is not much different from Yeji’s. The only difference is that his desire appears slightly more distorted. Jihoon is also a victim oppressed by a society obsessed with beauty. He vents his suppressed emotions through a grotesque hobby of collecting women’s pretty body parts. As the title suggests, it is truly "Ghost Messenger" (Gigi Gwigwi).

Director Jo Kyung-hoon said, "I wanted to pose the fundamental question, 'What is beauty?'" He added, "I wanted to point out the violence inherent in a society where being pretty is not just about wanting to be pretty but about being recognized by others as pretty."

With Jihoon’s appearance, this intention somewhat fades. He does not use the plastic surgery serum to be recognized as beautiful by others. He does not deceive himself either. He boldly expresses his desires and swallows up smaller desires. Limiting this to beauty given from birth can only be seen as a denial of artificial beauty. It is a sorrowful realization that no one can become Cinderella, yet the desire for it constantly operates.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.