Thank goodness for the Koreans, a people who take cinema pretty seriously. Back in 2002 when the protective legislation that ensures 40% of all Korean screenings feature domestic product came under threat, leading directors would shave their heads in protest. More recently, Chan-wook Park would completely abandon plans for a film dealing with the People’s Revolutionary Party incident of 1974 (when innocents were hanged on trumped up charges by the Chung-hee Park regime) following cuts made in The President’s Last Plan – a dramatisation of Chung-hee Park’s assassination.
Most importantly, though it hardly constitutes breaking news, the South Korean new wave continues to dazzle, invent and mind-fuck. Lady Vengeance, a dizzying baroque and the capstone to Chan-wook Park’s spectacular revenge trilogy keeps up the good work.
Convicted of child abduction and murder, then sent down for 13 years, the titular avenging angel (Yeong-ae Lee) plots an elaborate revenge on the real killer (Oldboy’s Min-sik Choi). Along the way we meet a young daughter who appears to have come down with The Curse Of The Cat People and a gallery of criminal grotesques worthy of Takashi Miike, but the film’s odd black comedy soon dissipates when our heroine discovers snuff videos featuring the child victims.
Those expecting another House Of The Blue Leaves may well be disappointed. While every frame of Lady Vengeance pulses along, Mr. Park is taking us somewhere bleak indeed. Fear not though. Contemplation doesn’t spoil the pulp poetics - it merely heightens the purgative aspects of the story. Weirdly, wonderfully, the cumulative effect is like emerging from a snake-handling baptismal having just had the time of your life.