Lady Vengeance

Chinjeolhan geumjass (Chan-wook Park - 2005)

For some odd and unexplainable reason the cinema of the east has been a bit out of my focus in later years. Lady Vengeance was picked up as a low prized secondhand DVD and sat for some time in my shelves besides assorted Japanese, Hong Kong and Korean film. When I finally sat down to view this, I expected to see a leggy, silent babe going around shooting bad guys with big guns. 

Seconds into the film I realized this was an eastern art-house effort. The start had a “Santa Sangre”-like opraesque flair that gripped my attention. The film as a whole holds the interest as it has many inventive scenes to offer. I was particularly gripped with the scene where the main character is reenacting a murder of a child before the police, jury and the press. The offbeat carnival of a film moves towards an ending providing the conclusion that one expects and it comes off as a satisfactory experience. 

I blame the lurid cover, but if I had read the back cover I would have known better. I viewed a screening of Oldboy in its day and was reasonably impressed. The Lady V has given me appetite for more and if I’m not mistaken I already have Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance in my collection. Maybe I spend an hour trying to locate it somewhere in my mess. 

Viewed on a Scandinavian DVD release.