26 March 2008
Gaborone — Lady Vengeance (2005) a.k.a Sympathy for Lady Vengeance was showing yesterday only at 7 p.m. at the Maru a Pula School, A/V Centre (Gaborone Film Society). It won "Best Film" at Venice in 2005 and the "Grand Prix" at the Cannes Film Festival in its initial showing in 2004 - perhaps not surprising, as Quentin Tarantino was the head of the jury? Though it is a prize-wining film it is not the type of film that all viewers would want to watch.
Lady Vengeance is the third in a trilogy of films about revenge set in Korea by the great and very controversial director Park Chan Wook. The first was Sympathy for Mister Vengeance (2002) and the second OldBoy (2003). It has been hailed as one of the best in cinema noir, or what is known in Asia as "Extreme". That is because it deals with an English teacher, Mr Baek (acted by Choi Min-sik who starred in OldBoy), a trusted and revered member of the species, who secretly is a serial killer who kidnaps, tapes and then murders children for their ransom money. His motivation is to "to buy a yacht".
He meets his comeuppance through Lee Geum-ja (played by the striking Lee Young-ae) who took the rap for his first desperate act (she doesn't know about the other kidnappings and murders that took place while she is in prison). Geum-ja served 13 years in prison, between 1991 and 2004, for the first crime. After confessing (to what she hadn't done) she was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering a six-year-old boy, Won-mo. It is important to note that a policeman (Nam Il-woo) did not believe her. The opening scene of the film deals through vivid flashbacks with her time in prison. She was both an angel (she donates a kidney to save the life of another prisoner who is then beholden to her) and an avenging angel, as in prison she both helps and befriends fellow inmates and kills again (a female sexual exploiter, a murder that earns her the label, "The Witch").
During hear years of incarceration she is planning her revenge against Baek and is seeking ways to enlist her new friends as accomplices in her scheme. There is a strange humour that runs through the film, eliciting laughter from the audience when they probably really do not want to laugh.
There is also a complicated subplot involving Jenny, Geum-ja's daughter, born before she went to jail, and adopted by a couple in Australia. This is one of the redeeming features of this otherwise bleak film that asks the question: If you had a child and he or she was kidnapped for the ransom money, and then still killed after you had paid a huge sum, and you were now presented with the murderer of your child and told to decide how he should be punished, what would you do? This is at the moral issue central to this film. Once out of prison Lady Vengeance gets a job in a bakery in Seoul where she also becomes involved with her 20-year-old co-worker, Kim Si-hu (Geun-shik). This leads to the kidnapper kidnapping a kidnapper. Before she acts, Geum-ja wants to find her daughter and goes to Australia where she quasi-kidnaps Jenny and brings her back to Seoul. Jenny, now 13, wants to know her mother and is a willing accomplice in her removal from Australia. Jenny helps to give another perspective to this chilling film and introduce a bit of warmth and humaneness. It is not all bleak in this Korean "pulp fiction".
Why has it won prizes when it is disjointed, episodic, confusing and fails to elicit sympathy? Perhaps because of its originality and level of cinematic creativity. Because it is so visually inventive it was the official selection at many film festivals across the world in 2005. But where does vengeance lead us? Perhaps an eye for an eye does make for a blind world? Is that Park Chan Wook's message? He says that he wishes to expose violence because as a youth, living under dictatorship in Korea, he stood by while others were removed and killed.
Lady Vengeance is one hour and 51 minutes long. It is in Korean with English subtitles. It is rated 18+ because of the mayhem. The director is Park Chan Wook. The script is by the director and Chung Seo-kyung. The cinematographer is Chung Chung-hoon; the editors are Kim Sang-bum and Kim Jae-bum; the music is by Choi Seung-hyun; and the martial arts director is Kwon Seung-ku. sasa_majuma@yahoo.co.uk
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