You’ll find mental health issues handled with more sensitivity in the average school playground, but unlike his biggest hit Oldboy, Park Chan-wook’s asylum-set love story does at least spare us graphic depictions of tooth removal and the consumption of live octopuses.

Thankfully, there’s nothing grosser than pickled radishes on the menu in the cuckoo's nest where Young-goon (Su-jeong Lim) winds up after sticking wires into her wrists and plugging herself into the mains.

(Park argues otherwise but it’s still not for the squeamish.)

Being a cyborg, Young-goon depends on electricity for sustenance; rice merely clogs up her circuits. The medical staff – or “white ’uns” - don’t understand.

However, toothbrush-fixated inmate Il-soon (Korean pop icon ‘Rain’ Jung Ji-hoon) can sympathise since he has the ability to meld minds with others. Sadly, he’s shrinking to the size of a dot, so he’ll have to work fast to help his new friend.

The doolally duo thus embark on a course of self-rehabilitation, involving yodelling, flying with ladybirds, and solving the mystery of granny’s false gnashers.

Park is definitely lightening up. Unfortunately his portrayal of psychotic illness is nothing short of childish. It makes Lars Von Trier’s The Idiots look like A Beautiful Mind.

And while the notion of anorexic androids spraying bullets from their fingers might sound like fun, we live in a world where the gleeful presentation of innocents being blown away is simply not cool. Not even in game-like dream sequences.

Some scenes also drift into the fist-clenchingly irritating realm of avant garde theatre. Yet there’s always something of interest going on in the background and, just as you’re about to dismiss it as total nonsense, Park begins to show the method in his madness.

The relationship between Young-goon and Il-soon blossoms into something much deeper than crazies-in-love wackiness, and Park gradually stitches the seemingly disparate threads of the story into a surprisingly neat whole.

From the opening scene to the bouncy score, the influence of Amelie is undeniable. Though I’m A Cyborg never reaches those warm and fuzzy heights, it’s an equally refreshing and quirky alternative to all those mass-produced ‘romantic’ puddings spewing out of Hollywood.

Elliott Noble