Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

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Sympathy for Lady Vengeance teaser poster
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Directed by	Park Chan-wook
Produced by	Cho Young-wuk Lee Chun-yeong Lee Tae-hun
Written by	Jeong Seo-Gyeong Park Chan-wook
Starring	Lee Young-ae Choi Min-sik
Distributed by	CJ Entertainment
Release date(s)	July 29, 2005 (South Korea) October 13, 2005 (Hong Kong) November 12, 2005 (Japan) November 16, 2005 (France) February 10, 2006 (UK) April 28, 2006 (US) January 11, 2007 (Germany)
Running time	112 min.
Language	Korean English Japanese
Preceded by	Oldboy
IMDb profile
Korean name
Hangul:	친절한 금자씨
Hanja:	親切한 金子氏
Revised Romanization:	Chinjeolhan Geumja-ssi
McCune-Reischauer:	Ch'injŏlhan Kŭmja-ssi

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (친절한 금자씨; literally, "Kind-Hearted Ms. Geum-Ja") is a 2005 South Korean film by director Park Chan-wook, and is the third installment in his trilogy of vengeance themed films, following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and Oldboy (2003).

The film debuted on July 29 in South Korea, and competed for the Golden Lion at the 62nd Venice International Film Festival in September 2005. While it failed to win in competition, it did walk away with Cinema of The Future, the Young Lion Award and the Best Innovated Film Award in the non-competition section. The film had its U.S. premiere on September 30 at the New York Film Festival. It began its limited release in North American theatres on May 5, 2006.

In the UK and North America, the film has been screened under the title Lady Vengeance.

1 Synopsis
2 Music
3 Fade to Black and White Version
4 Awards
5 Box Office
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The plot follows the character of Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young Ae). She is a teenager with a big problem: pregnancy. She desperately seeks help and finds it with a seemingly kind man: Mr. Baek (Choi Min-sik), who gives her a room and plenty of food.

Later, she is jailed for the kidnapping and murder of a young schoolboy, Won-mo. As the story unfolds, it turns out that Mr. Baek, the actual murderer, threatened to kill Geum-ja's newborn daughter if she did not take the fall for him. The detective on the case grills her on the details of the murder so that she can recreate suffocating Won-mo convincingly, down to the colour of the boy's favourite marble. The case is a media sensation due to her beauty and innocent appearance.

During her 13-year sentence, she affects a saintly persona, including a devout faith in Christianity, but in reality she becomes cold and calculating. She befriends the other inmates, donating a kidney to one, and killing the prison bully by poisoning her with bleach. She becomes known as "Miss Geum-ja the Kind-Hearted", though most realize her deadly capacity. She also befriends and cares for an elderly North Korean woman, a spy, who no one else would trust. In return for the friendship, the spy gives Geum-Ja a book containing the blueprint for a two-barreled handgun. Upon her release from prison, a Christian minister greets her with a white tofu cake to symbolize a fresh beginning. She coldly tips the cake out of his hands and onto the ground, and insults him. After 13 years in prison, she finally drops her saintly façade.

With the help of her fellow former-inmates, she puts a plan in motion to get vengeance on Mr. Baek. She begins calling in favours from the now-freed inmates, acquiring clothes, an apartment, a job at a bakery, and has the two-barrelled pistol from the spy's bluprint custom-built. She also begins wearing red eye-shadow and she smiles as she dreams about killing a Baek-headed dog with her beautiful gun.

She goes to the house of the parents of Won-mo and, begging for forgiveness, chops off the little finger of her right hand. Although she is prepared to sever all of her fingers, the parents restrain her and call an ambulance. In the hospital, an operation reattaches her finger, but costs her the remainder of her savings. She wears a cast on her finger for the remainder of the movie.

Geum-ja is distraught that her daughter has been adopted. She breaks into a building and locates her daughter's information file. Through the records she discovers that her daughter, now named Jenny, resides in Australia with foster parents and does not speak Korean. Geum-ja memorizes a few sentences in English and visits the family in Sydney. That night, Jenny asks Geum-ja how you say "mom" in Korean, and Geum-ja responds "Miss Geum-ja". Jenny insists on returning to Korea with Geum-ja, but Geum-ja refuses. The next day, Jenny threatens to slit her own throat with a knife if she was not allowed to go back to Seoul with Geum-ja, and the parents oblige.

Back in Korea, Geum-ja plans to kidnap Mr. Baek by having his wife, who went to prison with her, drug his dinner. However, Geum-ja's former minister has been spying on her for Mr. Baek, and now gives him photographs of his wife talking to Geum-ja. He attacks his wife and ties her to a chair before he unknowingly begins to eat the food. Meanwhile, thugs hired by Baek ambush Geum-ja and Jenny. The thugs chloroform Jenny, but Geum-ja manages to shoot both of them with her custom pistol. After the ordeal, Geum-ja heads to Baek's house and finds him unconscious. She ties him to a chair and transports him to an abandoned school.

When Baek awakens, Geum-ja begins torturing him. She strangles him with his tie in a manner similar to they way she re-enacted suffocating Won-mo in her confession. During the torture, Baek's mobile rings. Pulling it free, she finds several child toy mementos decorating it, including Won-mo's marble. Geum-Ja realizes that by failing to tell the truth 13 years ago, she allowed Baek to murder several other children. She shoots both of his feet, but leaves him alive.

Geum-ja summons the parents of the children that Baek killed to a meeting at the school. They discuss on what to do with Baek and decide to all torture him to death, while Baek is forced to listen through a PA in another room. The parents have a prolonged argument on how they should proceed, but eventually don raincoats, take weapons, and line up. Individually and in groups, the parents go into the next room and attack Baek. They return bloody and shaken. The last parent, an emotionless old woman, kills Baek with a pair of scissors that belonged to her murdered grandson. The parents have a picture taken so that none of them can confess without implicating their spouse. They then bury the corpse outside. Before covering the grave, Geum-ja shoots the corpse with her pistol and throws the gun in with the body.

With the parents, she heads to a bakery where she works and serves cake to the parents. They sing a disjointed birthday song and begin to eat the cake. During the silence, in which one parent suggests that an angel is passing, the parents squeeze their children's mementos painfully. Meanwhile at Geum-ja's apartment, Jenny is sleeping with her foster parents (who had just come from Australia), when she notices smoke. Outside, Geum-ja carries a cake box toward her apartment. She sees her Jenny barefoot in the snow and runs to her. They hug tightly for a moment before Geum-ja opens the box to reveal another white cake which resembles the block of tofu she was presented with by the minister. She tells her daughter to "live white", as pure as the cake. Jenny takes a taste of the cake and then offers a taste to Geum-ja, but she cannot react. Jenny then says that Geum-ja should live even more purely, then they look up at the snowing sky while Jenny tries to catch snow on her tongue, symbolic of the receiving of the consecrated bread in the Christian Communion rite. Geum-ja begins weeping, but does not open her mouth to catch the snow falling from the sky. Instead she drop her face into the cake, desperately devouring it and sobbing. Jenny moves around Geum-ja and hugs her from behind.

The movie ends with the narrator saying, "Farewell..." followed by Jenny's line: "Miss Geum-ja."

"Lady Vengeance" UK DVD cover

[edit] Music

The theme music of Lady Vengeance is an edited version of Vivaldi's "Ah ch'infelice sempre" from "Cessate, omai cessate." The song is appropriate since the unedited version's melody is sung by a woman who is seeking revenge on a man who has betrayed her, much like the movie itself. The entire soundtrack is heavily baroque-themed, featuring many pieces with harpsichord, baroque guitars, and other instruments. The soundtrack is also heavily influenced by Vivaldi's works.

[edit] Fade to Black and White Version

Two versions of the film exist, the standard version and the "Fade to Black and White version". The latter version begins in full colour, but throughout the film the colour gradually fades until it is totally black and white at the end of the film. Park intended the colour fade to illustrate Lee Geum-ja's progressively colder demeanour and her attempts to reach a stage of purity as she exacted her revenge. In conjunction with the camera technique of removing the colours, there is also a change in the environmental colours used in backgrounds, clothing etc. At the beginning of the film, the environments contain a lot of primary colours, whereas toward the end of the film pastel shades, blacks and whites are used. Lee wears a blue coat in the early part of the film, but this is replaced with a black leather coat at the end. The brightly coloured walls of the prison and Lee's bedroom are replaced with the grey walls of the school.

Both versions of the film were shown in Korean cinemas, although the fading version was presented only in digital format at a few DLP-equipped multiplexes.

This version has since been made available on the Korean Special Edition DVD of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (with DTS audio only), and in the Tartan Films DVD boxset releases of the Vengeance trilogy. On the Tartan boxset packaging, the version is incorrectly titled "Fade to White version".

[edit] Awards

Won Best Actress (International Competition) 8th Cinemanila Film Festival 2006: Lee Young-ae
Won "Best Director" at Bangkok Festival 2006
Lee Young-ae won "Best Actress" at Spain Film Festival 2005 (Sitges?)
Won "Little Golden Lion" at Venice Film Festival 2005
Lee Young-ae won "Best Actress" at Sitges Film Festival 2005
Lee Young-ae won "Best Actress" at Blue Dragon Awards 2005

[edit] Box Office

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance opened in Korea on July 29, 2005 to blockbuster business, grossing $7,382,034 in its first week according to boxofficemojo.com. In terms of total admissions, it was the seventh biggest domestic release in Korea that year, and the eighth biggest overall.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance opened in limited release in two North American theatres on April 28, 2006 under the title Lady Vengeance. In its opening weekend, it earned $9,850 ($4,925 per screen). It earned $197,486 during its entire run, playing at 15 screens during its widest point.

Its total worldwide box office gross is $23,457,690.