LADY VENGEANCE (2005)
After being wrongfully imprisoned for 13 years and having her child taken away from her, a woman seeks revenge through increasingly brutal means.
It took some time for Park Chan-wook to cement his reputation in Hollywood as one of the most electrifying filmmakers to emerge from the renaissance of Korean cinema in the early 21st-century. While his breakthrough, Joint Security Area / Gongdonggyeongbiguyeok (2000), was a domestic phenomenon in South Korea, it was predictably overlooked outside film circles discerning enough to look beyond the confines of Hollywood’s increasingly lethargic output. His politically charged, explosive thriller merely whispers at the ferocious style and thematic ambition that would eventually define Park’s later works. It was with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance / Boksuneun naui geot (2002) that Park truly began to sculpt his identity as a cinematic provocateur. His mordantly comic and unflinchingly bleak meditation on retribution and existential despair alerted jaded genre enthusiasts to a formidable auteur who dared to find poetry in pain and elegance in the grotesque.
When Park’s magnum opus Oldboy / Oldeuboi (2003) erupted into arthouse cinemas, it unexpectedly sent shockwaves through the international film community. Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time In… Hollywood) was one of its most vocal advocates, and the thrilling Oedipal tragedy won the Grand Prix Award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Park was no longer a promising filmmaker born from the Korean New Wave, but an auteur of global stature. With that elevated status came the freedom to complete what would be known as his “Vengeance Trilogy”. While Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance laid the groundwork with a deeply sombre meditation on despair, and Oldboy exploded with operatic fury, Lady Vengeance / Chinjeolhan Geumjassi was the culmination of Park’s ultimate thesis on retribution. If revenge is a dish best served cold, then the stylised epilogue to Park’s revenge triptych might be seen as the dessert.
After being arrested for kidnapping and infanticide, Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae) has spent 13 harrowing years imprisoned. Within the confines of incarceration, she spent the intervening years reshaping her public persona into one of saintly repentance. She fostered friendships by baking tofu for her fellow inmates, tending to their wounds, and participating in prison cookery classes. However, this carefully cultivated benevolence is nothing more than a facade. Beneath this mask of redemption lies a meticulous fury and a repressed rage that has been simmering for over a decade. Although she admitted to the crime, it was a grotesque fabrication. Geum-ja was actually unjustly convicted and manipulated into martyrdom by her malevolent tormentor, Mr Baek (Choi Min-sik). While holding her infant daughter hostage, Baek blackmailed Geum-ja into a false confession.
Following her release, Geum-ja reconnects with a network of former inmates indebted to her in ways both practical and profound. Together, they begin orchestrating a meticulous plan of retribution. Yet, her outlook changes when she discovers her estranged daughter, Jenny (Yea-young Kwon), has been adopted by an Australian family and raised in suburban normality. Their reunion is strained and hardly provides the sense of closure she had naively envisioned. Jenny is bewildered by her mother’s overtures and harbours resentment towards the woman she believes abandoned her as a child. As Geum-ja struggles to reconcile with her daughter, she finds herself conflicted between her insatiable thirst for vengeance and the desperate need for atonement.
Known primarily for her genteel role in the long-running drama series The Jewel in the Palace (2003), Lee Yeong-ae presents a protagonist radically removed from her television persona. As Lee Geum-ja, the actress embodies a protagonist of tragic beauty and psychological complexity. Behind her angelic porcelain visage simmers the ferocity of a woman reassembling her fragmented self through the ritual act of vengeance.
As she metamorphoses into an architect of retribution, the actress exudes the fatalistic glamour and the alluring cool of a femme fatale with an inhabited recklessness underlined by red eye shadow. While comparisons to icons such as Zoë Tamerlaine’s mute avenger in Ms. 45 (1981) and Uma Thurman’s Bride in Kill Bill (2003) are inevitable, Lee’s rendering of vengeance is less theatrical. Her transformation from falsely convicted martyr to an avenging angel is portrayed with a restraint and grace that eschews sensationalism in favour of moral complexity. It’s a delicate balancing act between fragility and ruthlessness, but she compartmentalises the opposing sides of her character’s personality wonderfully.
“It has to be pretty. Everything should be pretty,” says Geum-ja as she commissions an absurdly ornate but utterly impractical firearm of her own design. The same principle applies to Park Chan-wook’s filmmaking sensibilities. Lady Vengeance is unmistakably the work of a major artist improving his finesse before our eyes. His meticulously framed compositions, purposeful camera movements, and virtuoso image manipulation demonstrate just how much Park has already improved his craft.
There’s an ethereal quality to Jeong Jeong-hoon’s (Antarctic Diary) cinematography that makes even the most mundane locations seem almost magical. The frequent flashback sequences are much more stylistically flamboyant, evoking the saturated palette and whimsical lyricism of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie (2001). However, once Geum-ja returns to Seoul, whimsy gives way to menace. The angular stone walls and dark alleyways surrounding her apartment are transformed into a purgatorial terrain. Viewers concerned that Park had softened his grotesque brutality in favour of arthouse respectability need not worry. Although Lady Vengeance is more leisurely paced, a surreal incarnation of Baek’s head on a canine body serves as a reminder that the filmmaker’s perversity is still intact.
The three successive entries that form Park’s thematically linked trilogy all draw viewers in by forcing them to unravel mysteries. Lady Vengeance is much more ornate and esoteric than its predecessors, unfolding with the elegance of a puzzle. The audience is introduced to Geum-Ja as she actively rejects morality and chooses to become a crusader for vengeance. Upon leaving prison, her first act of freedom is to coldly dismiss the eager Christian pastor (Kim Byeong-ok) awaiting her outside.
As he presents a block of tofu that represents her commitment to “live white as snow and never sin again”, she responds, “Why don’t you go screw yourself?” before putting on the sunglasses and walking away. Through a confounding welter of disjointed flashbacks, the audience is actively encouraged to piece together Park’s jigsaw. Geum-ja is portrayed as a saintly figure during her tenure incarcerated. She’s helpful around the prison, coming to the aid of her female cohabitants in big ways, earning the nickname “Geum-Ja the kindhearted”. However, as the tale progresses, it’s gradually revealed that Geum-ja is manipulating the inmates to gain their assistance in helping her carry out an elaborate scheme.
When Geum-ja discovers a seemingly innocuous marble, the grotesque truth behind her conviction is unearthed. It’s revealed Baek is not simply a failed kidnapper, but a monstrous and irredeemable serial child murderer who has claimed five victims. With the help of some particularly disturbing home video footage, Geum-ja presents the bereaved parents with an unflinching ultimatum. They can either allow the legal system to administer its bureaucratic form of retribution, or they can seize the opportunity to exact vengeance themselves. It’s here where Park refuses to pander to the audience’s more primitive appetites and elevates Lady Vengeance beyond formulaic revenge thrillers.
His orchestration of vengeance eschews the garish bloodlust of his Hollywood contemporaries such as Kill Bill and John Wick (2014) in favour of something more meditative and philosophical. Geum-ja summons the grieving parents and offers them not catharsis but a terrible choice. She places the knife in their hands and questions not just what they wish to do, but what they wish to become. It’s during these contemplative moments that we are confronted with Park’s true intention for this closing chapter, whether salvation or redemption can be truly attained through such acts of brutality.
Unlike its nihilistic predecessors, Lady Vengeance generates the odd feeling of hope. If Sympathy for Mr. Vengeanceposed the question of how ordinary people can commit unforgivable acts, and Oldboy dissected the psychological toll of vengeance, the closing chapter is ultimately about the possibility of personal growth. This development is captured with aching beauty in the final wintery moments. As Geum-ja stands in the falling snow beside her daughter Jenny, the narrator reflects, “she still couldn’t find the redemption she so desired”. Jenny offers her mother a plate of white tofu and says, “Be white, and live white, like this”. After devoting 13 years to pursuing vengeance against Baek, Geum-ja comes to the devastating realisation that retribution has left her empty. If she’s to reclaim her life, she must abandon the cycle of violence and strive to “live white as snow and never sin again”. Admittedly, the symbolism here is a little heavy-handed, especially following an ambiguous spiritual encounter that suggests absolution. Regardless, it’s an unexpectedly poignant conclusion to a trilogy otherwise defined by its savagery that suggests redemption is possible.
Lady Vengeance constantly teeters on the precipice of unrelenting despair, but Park deftly prevents it from collapsing under the weight of its own despair by carefully threading a strand of dark humour throughout. He understands that unrelenting misery can become monotonous without contrast and punctuates some of the vilest moments with a mischievous tone that is deeply embedded in the DNA of Korean cinema. A particularly memorable sequence involves Jenny blackmailing her way into Korea with a kitchen knife. It’s a delightfully whimsical moment played with such irreverence that it feels almost as though it were plucked from a Wes Anderson (The Phoenician Scheme) playbook. Perhaps the most unsettling is how Park wrings uneasy laughter from its most depraved moments that would typically horrify the fainthearted. Whether it’s a celebratory photograph to document a gruesome achievement or the sudden reveal of an absurdly oversized axe, these scenes function as emotional exhilaration. The kind of grim relief that arrives only after prolonged tension.
Ultimately, Lady Vengeance might feel unexpectedly restrained when measured against the visceral ferocity of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. Its intricately layered narrative might strike audiences as meandering and unfocused. Whereas other elements may feel underdeveloped or tonally discordant to the impatient eye. However, those willing to surrender themselves to the winding story and complex characters will be rewarded. What unfolds is a visually sumptuous and thematically rich meditation on guilt, retribution, and the corrosive weight of forgiveness. Lady Vengeance concludes Park Chan-wook’s “Vengeance Trilogy” not with a violent crescendo, but with a masterfully orchestrated reckoning that implicates the audience as moral accomplices in Geum-ja’s quest.
SOUTH KOREA | 2005 | 155 MINUTES | 2:35:1 | COLOUR | KOREAN • JAPANESE • ENGLISH
Cast & Crew
director: Park Chan-wook.
writers: Chung Seo-kyung & Park Chan-wook (based on the comic-book by Park Myeong-chan.)
starring: Lee Yeong-ae, Choi Min Sik & Yea-young Kwon.
