A WOMAN'S ANGLE ON VENGENCE : "LADY VENGENCE"

Ok, I’m sorry, but I really, really cannot have a week of “original” Asian films without touching on that all-time great among those directors that are slightly more “original” than others (otherwise known as mad), Park Chan-Wook. And by the way I do realize that the title of the post is slightly misleading in that Park Chan-Wook is not a woman, but the perspective presented in the film is a woman's, so... Mmm, I think we it counts =) The film I have in mind is the last film of his “vengeance trilogy” that started off with Oldboy and continued with Sympathy for Mister Vengence. Lady Vengece, if a little lighter on the twisted side of things (and don’t get me wrong, I mean that as a compliment!) definitely doesn’t let up on the adrenaline and emotion. And don’t forget, I said it just went lighter on the twisted… So do handle with care…
13 years ago, Geum-Ja caused absolute scandal in Korea when, at the age of 20, she admitted to kidnapping and brutally killing a small boy. She is sent to prison, as you can imagine. But in prison her legend only continues to grow, not as a notorious killer but as an “angel”, one of the most good-hearted people ever to have existed. Her sentence over, she is out of prison, and as anyone can imagine, more than ready to start her life over. The thing is, before she actually can start her life over, she has things to do with her past that she must deal with. This is, notably, the man whose fault it is she ended up in prison in the first place. Having had 13 years to plan this vengeance, and since this man is a person of particular evilness, Geum-Ja has an extra-special kind of vengeance planned out for him…
I have been thinking on what makes Asian films so darned successful. I mean, not everyone likes them but why are they so popular with the people who do (I’m talking about the fans who are originally from the “Western World” you understand). I think with films like Lady Vengece, like in Audition (see above) actually, it is the element of suspense. In Asian films the suspense is usually two-fold. Firstly, there is the information, leaked little by little. Watching Lady Vengence takes a serious amount of background effort; we slowly piece together the puzzle of Geum-Ja’s story, starting from the press reports about her at the time of her incarceration and moving slowly on to a more personalized account as the film carries on. Then there is the fact that we are thus led to constantly guess what will happen next. Only the thing is, because the directors of these films have such personal styles and since the conventions they use originate in a culture so different from our own, we rarely succeed in figuring out what will happen next. When the adrenaline rush resulting from this mixes with the adrenaline rush from the film itself, the story, the action and the “reveal” at the end, well… It makes Park Chan-Wook’s films among the most exciting these days one can watch. Even if the themes undertaken and the way they are undertaken are a tad hard to stomach sometimes, in this time of the “uniformity” of the mainstream, I find something original that surprises me very, very refreshing. Plus, Lady Vengence reads very much like a sort of “vigilante” style crime story, there is a crime that has been committed and all Geum-Ja really wants is to bring the real perpetrator to justice. If you’re into the crime-drama scene and if you’re on the hunt for something original, look no further than this one I say. You will not regret it.