MoFo MC December: Lady Vengeance

I'll be honest and say I'm not sure I totally get everything about this film, but hopefully the discussions can fulfill something. My initial thoughts:


Lady Vengeance, if taken somewhat out of context from her brother films, is less about vengeance and more about attrition and redemption. Lee Geum-ja serves prison time, yet unknown to us is her proven guilt of murdering a child, but uses the time to befriend her prison mates. Seemingly superficial relationships is what Lee uses to pave her way towards her goal, which is to hold accountable those who wronged her. By the way, the actual criminal threatened Lee’s newborn daughter if she didn’t confess to the murder.



It starts off like a fairly typical revenge thriller in that sense, but the film isn’t content with what would be a tired sequence of events. Lee becomes so overcome with her plan that the film now follows a hallucinatory pace; it’s as if Amelie married a murderous Lewis Carroll. The pace, Lee turning into a stoic, graphic novel vigilante, and the juxtaposition of her exhibited emotions with the gorgeous mise-en-scene, are what turn the movie on its head. Another by-the-way, the real child murderer is a preschool teacher now.



A couple things to consider deeper: her daughter, now a teen adopted into Australia, doesn’t speak Korean. The way the film utilizes this language gap is brilliant, and the growth of their relationship later on is wrenching, but another bold move is taken when Lee gives up her retribution to the parents of the dead children. Does it take away from her sympathy, transferring our emotions to the parents, despite their violent reactions under Vivaldi music? Despite her coldness, she still did many good things to people, so was she misinterpreting her path?



Struggles between Christianity and Buddhism, the bumpy quest out of dishonor, the power of a woman in this society, the 12-Angry-Men approach to turning revenge into purity, the dithering of responsibility, the inevitable alteration of person for better or worse; when art tells us nothing is black and white, then fades to black and white, what can we make of any of these convictions? Perhaps a quote from Bruno Bettelheim will incite something:

“The fairytale is therapeutic because the patient can find their own solution through contemplating what the story seems to imply about them and their conflicts. Fairytales direct us to discover as a child and rediscover as an adult our identities and calling. They intimate that a rewarding good life is within reach despite adversity but only if one does not shy away from hazardous struggles without which no one can ever achieve true identity.”

In my instant queue, and evn though I didn't vote for it I'm glad it won. I'll be watching it this weekend, probably tommorow

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*Minor spoilers*

First off, can I just say how glad I am now that this won, despite not voting for it? I still want to see Aguirre and will at some point but honestly, right now I can't imagine myself enjoying that as much as I did this.

The first thing that struck me was just how visually stunning the film is. There so much to look at, vibrant and subdued colors in so many textures and patterns that make up this gruesome, dark but hauntingly beautiful world, shot to near perfection by Chung-hoon Chung. I believe it's possible to enjoy this film on an entirely separate, purely visual level as if it were a moving painting.

But you'd be missing out on something special were you to ignore the story, at first intriguingly playful, but which emotionally descends slowly, on a thin line between reality and dream, with the character until a breathtaking kick in the gut, a visceral final act brought to a close with a moving, melancholy final 10 minutes.

It's provocative not because of its grisly images or disturbing subject matter, but because it makes us look inward. Lady Vengeance is a notch above simple revenge fantasy because it's directly appealing to the notion that put in the same situation as those parents, none of us really know what our reaction would be. That's a disturbing thought that the film plays with subtly, cleverly and very effectively.

It works, and on many levels. There's moments of black humor, grisly but stylish violence, a very human, emotional through-line delivered with great performances and a terrific visual depth. So glad this won, because I probably wouldn't have picked it out on my own otherwise. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Also, could someone try to clear something up for me? I know that it was released in Korea under the title Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, and for North American/European releases it was renamed Lady Vengeance. Does anyone know if there's any particular reason for this, because I've looked and can't find anything elsewhere online. Are they interchangeable or is there a clear-cut, "official" name we should be using?

Personally, I think the original is the far more fitting title because in a way it's asking us that question; do we feel sorry for this woman? Are her actions justified? Without the "Sympathy", Lady Vengeance implies relatively shallow revenge fantasy, but the film is much deeper than that.

Well the original original title is Kind-hearted Ms. Geum-ja, but I assume they took out the "sympathy" from the title here because it would be confused with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.

I think if you compare the assignment of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance/Lady Vengeance, they both fit in their own ways; the questions you raise apply to both but what "sympathy" adds to Lady Vengeance, in my opinion, deals less with traditional sympathy that the first film addressed and more with a difficult empathy with both stoic and customary personalities.

Oh, I actually have this. Now if I could just get off my ass and watch it. We're doing all Christmas stuff right now, but will try to get in here after that. Been wanting to see this for years.

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

Lady Vengeance (2005)

Park Chan-wook directs the story of revenge and more importantly atonement. The film follows a seductive woman who is set up to confess of a brutal murder of a young boy. Her daughter is taken away from her and once she gets out, she's not filled with fury and acting carelessly. She pursues her simple and timed plan, in vengeance of the man who framed her.

Her character is difficult to follow, in her struggle of keeping stable emotions, to the point of bi-polar. She can handle a stressful situation in a sweat free composure, but has mental breakdowns in other difficulties. She's like a care taker to her fellow prisoners, and takes on any and all responsibilities when in the jail, asking for nothing in return. Once she gets out her favors are repaid, and she's more controlling in nature, and self centered. We know very little of the characters background, making her very elusive, and she can get away with anything.

The film can get very weird, with pictures of our protagonists face glowing bright as a sun, and a literal moving picture like the one you'd see in Harry Potter. It got to the point of weird as in "I'm a Cyborg but That's Ok" by the same director, a film I'm much less fond of. This turned me off while watching, but while reflecting the film I grew fond and curious of what these moments meant.

Some scenes were so burdensome to the mind, that I still can't get them out of my head, pushed graphically on the issue of child abuse, to a point that most directors would've turned away the camera and let your imagination work it out. Wook didn't give you the chance to avoid it, and much like "Lady Vengeance" didn't let the families avoid it. The film could echo Tarantino's "Kill Bill", except in a more realistic and philosophical aspect. Less gritty fun and more true to life. "Lady Vengeance" understood despite everything she didn't face the worse of the villains evils. She let the people who lived with his true evils bundled inside them, release their rage upon him, in a bloody and emotional scene. I highly encourage a watch of this, it's not as great as "Oldboy", but it has more arthouse elements, and a stronger meaning

Arthouse Rating:

*Minor Spoiler*
Also I believe the scene where she is dragging the dog with the human head and sleigh legs, is a foreshadow in the scene where she shoots the dog with her new gun. In both scenes the face was friendly and I recall hearing a heart beat in both.

Yoda needs to sticky this, it's already on the second page of general movie discussion.

Only two people watched it? It got 7 votes

Sorry for the delay; Christmas stuff. Seeing this today and looking forward to it. Just prettied up the Movie Club page for it, too.

Finally saw it. Sorry, like everyone else I did not adequately anticipate how wrapped up in Christmas stuff I would get.

First off, great writeups, all. I wonder if the gradual revelation of her situation is meant to say anything about the nature of vengeance. We start by assuming she's awful, then see it's a bit more complicated, and eventually learn that she was in an impossible situation. In that sense it reminds me a little of Irreversible, which (spoilers, obviously) shows revenge in reverse order, so we appreciate how brutal the vengeance is without having it softened by sharing in the anger that produces it.

Like winter, I'm not entirely sure to think of it. Is it making any point here? Does she regret what she's done by the end? Does the reintroduction of her daughter into her life cause a shift, from wanting vengeance to just needing it? Or is the shift subtler? For example, she rampages towards this guy, but when she sees the trophies on his keychain, which he's collected from other victims, she manages to step outside herself, even though she desperately wants to kill him then and there. In a twisted way, she's showing a lot of empathy there in holding back and then offering him up to the families of the other victims. Still pretty twisted, of course, but I think it represents her letting go of her own hatred and thinking about other people. It's a start, at least.

There is one possible message, if the film's meant to have one. And I might be reading too much into this, but...

At one point I went back and rewatched a small part of the film to count the number of participants in the film's climactic murder. I wanted to see if they comprised enough to be a jury. Turns out, they don't--there are 9 family members in the photo, and still only 11 people there even if you count Geum-ja and the detective. But my wife pointed out that foreign juries likely vary in size, which I stupidly had not considered immediately. Hong Kong, for example, sometimes uses 9, the same number as in the photograph.

So I began looking into it to see what kind of system South Korea uses and get this: until recently, South Korea didn't have citizen participation in legal proceedings! They've begun instituting jury systems recently, but Sympathy for Lady Vengeance was made in 2005, before the reforms had begun. Perhaps that was the point, then: the film (and maybe the entire trilogy, for that matter) is an expression of frustration with the criminal justice system. Of being forced to live in a system you can't be a part of directly. Like living in a Democracy without being able to vote.

When you start to look at the film this way, a lot of things fall into place. Geum-ja is more like the detective, and the detective is more like the judge; he gives it legitimacy. He's made to sit in a chair and confront his crimes, and the "jury" debates his fate in a separate room, arguing and considering the evidence. And, perhaps most importantly, they all stand up and take the picture together, owning the decision. And that element of daylight makes all the difference. And am I misremembering, that as they bury the body, the sun's beginning to come up?

Anyway, I like the movie fairly well either way (I prefer Oldboy, mind you), but I like it even more when I think about it this way.

I will say that I did spend large swaths of the movie, though, vaguely confused about what I was watching. The jumps around in time are a little schizo, and for a brief period I thought the murdered she'd captured was actually someone else. D'oh. Figured it out shortly after, but I was surprised at how difficult it is to keep these sorts of non-linear films straight the first time through when they come from another culture. Might have something to do with having the subtitles to process (which isn't hard, but maybe that's just one background mental task too many). Dunno, but I had more trouble with sussing this stuff out than I usually do.

Didn't vote for this film but glad it won because I recently watched Oldboy which I loved so I'll try and watch this and report back with my thoughts soon.

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I'm really glad you pointed this out. I know from interviews that for Mr. Vengeance Park was really focused on social politics, and here we just needed a man with a 12-angry-men brain to point it out for this film. The anarchist from the earlier film allegedly represented a whole movement that strived for a change in the way society operated, so it's not far-fetched to consider a cross-over here. Plus, the whole detective/judge/detective element aligns with Park's Hitchcock schooling, and frankly that makes this all the more fitting of a final film; justice =/= vengeance, justice = empathy, leading to other things.

However, I would also add that I don't think Oldboy is representative of these socio-political themes, although I'm open to be proven wrong, but I know that after the monetary failure of Mr. Vengeance, Park was basically retaliating against the press with a crazy film instead of a contemplative one.

It's been a few years since I've seen Oldboy, but off the top of my head I think you're right, about it not containing much in the way of a sociopolitical message. And that actually gives me a very interesting idea: maybe they're about the progression from revenge to justice, and maybe they achieve this by shifting perspectives.

Oldboy is about vengeance on a personal level, and Lady Vengeance is about how it relates to justice and society at large. Oldboy is more about the individual, Lady Vengeance more about the group. In the former, the revenge is largely carried out by one man. And the famous hallway fight sequence really underscores this, I think. In that scene he's a total force of nature, and gets through it not with slick moves and evasions, but on sheer willpower. He gets the crap kicked out of him, but keeps going. One against many. Now think of Lady Vengeance: it's the exact opposite. The bad guy is by himself, and he gets ganged up on by the victims. Many against one.

Even the narrative structures of the films reflect this dynamic: Oldboy is largely told, if memory serves me, from Dae-su's point of view. Lady Vengeance is constantly warping into different points of view. It introduces each of the people from Geum-ja's prison stint from their own point of view.

Geum-ja is what Dae-su would have been if he'd stopped to consider his actions. She heads down the same path, but steps outside herself when she finds those charms, and thus averts the same terrible end he meets. That kinda makes me wonder if "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance" isn't a reference to other people who sympathize with her (as I first assumed), but for the sympathy she gains for others. It's not for her in the sense that she gets it, but for her in the sense that she has it.

So anyway, the idea is that Dae-su seeks vengeance on his own, selfishly, and pays for it. Geum-ja takes another step bu thinking of others and achieving something closer to justice. Maybe you can tell me, without spoiling the film, whether Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance fits into this progression?

Just a quick bump to see if anyone--winter or otherwise--has seen Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and can tell me, without getting into overt spoilers, whether it fits the kind of progression I mentioned?

It's a good question certainly. My instinct tells me Mr. Vengeance is more third person than the following two films, putting the act of sympathy in the audience's hands. From the audience's perspective, you can see the pros and cons to both main characters' motives and actions, making it extremely hard to take a side or even an opinion at times. In terms of the following two, the audience's yearning is warped by the perspective change; in Oldboy, Dae-su's tragedy makes the audience feel for him regardless of his short-sightedness, and in Lady Vengeance, Geum-ja's consternation makes the audience apply, as you aptly put it, a sort of justice to her path.

I'm not sure if I could say that there is a path from revenge to justice within the three films. Between the latter two, yes, of course, but as a whole it's as if Park Chan-wook started complicated, started in the greyest of the grey. In light of your hypothesis, I feel it makes sense to assume the trilogy still represents a path, but perhaps starting from the omniscient outside, where nothing is right or wrong, moving to the heart of it, where everything is right and wrong, and then taking one step back with the knowledge of it all, where, ironically, we're back in the grey, but a well-founded grey that is deemed "right." Does that make sense?

I think so, yes. Though it raises a tricky question, because if I had to guess what that sort of progression would look like it, it would be the omniscient view, the group, and then the individual. But then, that's a better reflection of how I believe change is achieved. Maybe he thinks otherwise, and deliberately has those last two flipped?

I guess I should just watch it, huh?

Isn't it time for a new movie of the month?

It's not actually monthly; it's every 3 months or so. So yeah, nearly.

I can have another up for March; any thematic suggestions? Or some genre/decade/whatever people want to discuss?

I'd always like a bit more participation by the way, like, at least more than a page worth