20130910: Horror Review--Lady Vengeance

Name: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)
IMDb: link to Sympathy for Lady Vengeance page

Genres: Horror.   Country of origin: Korea (Spoken language is Korean, with English subtitles.)

Cast: Yeong-ae Lee as Geum-ja Lee, Min-sik Choi as Mr. Baek.

Directed by: Chan Wook Park.  Written by: Seo-Gyeong Jeong, Chan Wook Park.

image courtesy of TMDb

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Geum-ja was framed for killing a child, then served 13.5 years for the crime. Flashbacks tell how she created loyalty within her prison mates.

After she gets out, she takes a job with a baker, and takes triple advantage of his generosity.  One wonders why the baker put up with this.

She decides that she is a position, finally, to settle some scores.

Delineation of conflicts:
She has a custom gun built to deal harshly with her nemesis.

She dreams that her daughter is with her.  This is, as far as I can tell in this horrid mess, contrary to fact.  The battle in her mind rages on.

She collects real evidence, and gains real allies, against the murdering bastard who framed her.

Resolution:
Lady Vengeance lines up everything for her revenge.  Does she take it?  Does she get any lasting benefit from it?

One line summary: Badly done fractured fairy tale of tremendous ugliness.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 6/10  There is a tendency for most of the screen to be out of focus.  This does fit in with the protagonist's obsessions.  However, it is distracting and ugly for most of the screen to be meaningless.  There were also camera jerks and bad zooming, but only occasionally.

Sound: 8/10 The subtitles do the job, but the voices seemed to be miked OK. 

Incidental music: 2/10 I like harpsichord music.  The presence of horrific and disgusting passages filled with harpsichord music increases my dislike of the film.  Generally speaking, I like Vivaldi's compositions.  There are several Vivaldi pieces used in this film, which seems discordant (sound versus visual content) at best. I am most strongly reminded of A Clockwork Orange (1972).  Since I like Beethoven's music in general, I had the same sort of reaction.  The beauty and the clarity of the music being pressed into association with psychotic violent behavior was just disgusting.

Acting: 2/10 Much of narration is told from within a particular daydream or hallucination.  The high density of flashbacks contributes to the difficulty telling whether the performance is acting or just a crazy twit being herself as opposed to acting.

Screenplay: 4/10 Flashbacks, daydreams, and hallucinations are film devices that I do not care for.  They usually do not work, and they are very irritating here.  Voice-over narration is another sign of script failure.

Final Rating: 4/10  It's competent visually. It's well-miked for sound.  Otherwise it's unforgivable.  Three black holes for screenplay, acting, and incidental music.  It's difficult to believe that this film had the same director as Old Boy (2003).

Hide/Show Spoilers

1. As the film progresses (well, the clock goes forward; there is not progress), Geum-ja has an ally drug her nemesis.  They bind and gag him, then transport him to a place that they control where no one can hear them.
2. Other victims of the real killer are found, ones killed while Geum-ja was in prison.  The parents are offered to watch the last moments of their children's lives, as filmed by the killer. This seems needless infliction of additional suffering.
3. How did Geum-ja arrange this without the cops arresting her and carting her off to jail again?  This seems to be skipped over.
4. In any case, in the film, the parents decide to punish and do in the child killer themselves.
5. Then they do it.
6. Later they meet at the bakery and have cake.  Lovely.