It's probably not a surprise to anyone that revenge, aside from being a dish best served cold (with attention to detail), is an act that instead of bringing closure, opens floodgates to our deepest, base nature comes flying out and logic goes out the window. It's more a harbinger of dangerous emptiness than to the means of setting things straight. And yet, we indulge in it, often to extreme lengths, and on more than one occasion, it's the only thing to do.
SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE is an excellent study of how the passage of time can deepen wounds from more than one source. It's about how a woman's all-consuming need for getting back at a man who ruined her life has her become the most angelic looking woman in prison. Indeed, Geuma-ja Lee's face radiates a translucent luminosity when she meditates as she ingratiates herself into the lives and stories and situations of her inmates, ensuring that once she's out of prison, they will gladly comply in getting her right within striking distance to her enemy, Mr. Baek.
The first half of the movie may baffle or annoy people. Park Chan-wook is a highly stylized study of interconnecting stories that take the long way into establishing what will become a more linear course during the second half. Character delineations of Geum-ja Lee's inmates are broad but effective in getting the convoluted plot into motion. Most notably drawn is a overweight lesbian who killed her entire family and ate them and who has a thing for "plumper" girls. While she berates every other female who comes across her path and at the moment of a disturbing orgasm calls out Geum-ja's name, Geum-ja has a surprise in store for her no one could see coming.
This is one of the many surprises that describe SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE. Geum-ja's elliptical course towards Mr. Baek has her getting involved with a much younger boy at the same time she travels to Australia to reclaim her lost daughter who resents Geum-ja's abandonment. Transitions from one scene to the next are visually stunning -- the movie has the feeling of a very lucid dream in which characters not present in one scene appear in order to interact with the ones on-screen. The sequence in which Geum-ja catches up to Mr. Baek and tortures him while her daughter watches is a tour-de-force of poetic violence. Interposing Yeong-ae Lee's profile with the young actress who plays her daughter as they exchange explanations, using Mr. Baek as a translator, is brilliant as it is moving as it precludes the story's second emotional, ferocious climax. It's here when the film reveals and revels in what it has been hinting at all along: releasing our basest natures in order to destroy the person who destroyed a loved one -- in this case, an innocent child. Gothic, potent images, ruthless and implacable: the movie jumps right over the edge and embraces its blackness like a lover. It's terrific to watch.
SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE, however, looks like it should have ended here but Park Chan-wook has something else in store: the meditation of what the aftermath. It's here when mother and daughter have one of their most poignant exchanges on film, which seems symbolic rather than actual, but draws the notion that all there is left to do is to become pure. For such an emotionally, visually violent film, this may be the only way to go from here.
SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE is an excellent study of how the passage of time can deepen wounds from more than one source. It's about how a woman's all-consuming need for getting back at a man who ruined her life has her become the most angelic looking woman in prison. Indeed, Geuma-ja Lee's face radiates a translucent luminosity when she meditates as she ingratiates herself into the lives and stories and situations of her inmates, ensuring that once she's out of prison, they will gladly comply in getting her right within striking distance to her enemy, Mr. Baek.
The first half of the movie may baffle or annoy people. Park Chan-wook is a highly stylized study of interconnecting stories that take the long way into establishing what will become a more linear course during the second half. Character delineations of Geum-ja Lee's inmates are broad but effective in getting the convoluted plot into motion. Most notably drawn is a overweight lesbian who killed her entire family and ate them and who has a thing for "plumper" girls. While she berates every other female who comes across her path and at the moment of a disturbing orgasm calls out Geum-ja's name, Geum-ja has a surprise in store for her no one could see coming.
This is one of the many surprises that describe SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE. Geum-ja's elliptical course towards Mr. Baek has her getting involved with a much younger boy at the same time she travels to Australia to reclaim her lost daughter who resents Geum-ja's abandonment. Transitions from one scene to the next are visually stunning -- the movie has the feeling of a very lucid dream in which characters not present in one scene appear in order to interact with the ones on-screen. The sequence in which Geum-ja catches up to Mr. Baek and tortures him while her daughter watches is a tour-de-force of poetic violence. Interposing Yeong-ae Lee's profile with the young actress who plays her daughter as they exchange explanations, using Mr. Baek as a translator, is brilliant as it is moving as it precludes the story's second emotional, ferocious climax. It's here when the film reveals and revels in what it has been hinting at all along: releasing our basest natures in order to destroy the person who destroyed a loved one -- in this case, an innocent child. Gothic, potent images, ruthless and implacable: the movie jumps right over the edge and embraces its blackness like a lover. It's terrific to watch.
SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE, however, looks like it should have ended here but Park Chan-wook has something else in store: the meditation of what the aftermath. It's here when mother and daughter have one of their most poignant exchanges on film, which seems symbolic rather than actual, but draws the notion that all there is left to do is to become pure. For such an emotionally, visually violent film, this may be the only way to go from here.