aka Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Lady Vengeance... any dumb ass could guess that with a title like that, there is going to be boobs, and there is going to be blood. Lady Vengeance is like the crack addicted, homicidal prostitute version of an art house film - the type of feel that you can only get from the Asian film making aesthetic. There are some fantastically portrayed, viscous female characters throughout the history of Asian cinema, and Geum-ja from Lady Vengeance is right up there with them. The type of cruelty she is subjected to throughout Lady Vengeance would be fit for the raunchiest of 1930s pulp fiction crime novels. I would expect no less from Chan-Wook Park (or Park Chan Wook, as I've come to realize it's listed in his credits). Lady Vengeance, aka Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, is the third and final installment of Park's Vengeance Trilogy. Basically, this movie is the cherry on top of a deliciously violent ice cream sundae.
I've been ultimately impressed with all three parts of Park's Vengeance Trilogy (especially Oldboy). However, out of the three, I really felt like he put the strongest directorial stamp on Lady Vengeance. His style as a broodingly savage visual director is palpable throughout each second of the film. The course of the narrative is anything-but linear, and the on screen action runs the gambit from punch-you-in-the-face blatantness, to the most divine subtlety. Some of my favorite moments were the most subtle, like the innovative transitions between scenes. I've only seen it once so far, but I'll have to go back and re-examine. I love a movie that has layers of visual depth that all add to the meaning of the scene. Yeah. And there's some bad ass murders in there. That's what you really wanted to hear about, right?
