Lady Vengeance

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Movie
German title Lady Vengeance
Original title 친절한 금자씨 (Chinjeolhan geumjassi)
Country of production South Korea
original language Korean
Publishing year 2005
length 112 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Park Chan-wook
script Chung Seo-kyung ,
Park Chan-wook
production Lee Chun-young ,
Lee Tae-hun ,
Cho Young-wuk
music Cho Young-wuk ,
Choi Seung-hyun
camera Chung Chung-hoon
cut Kim Sang-bum,
Kim Jae-bum
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
Oldboy

Lady Vengeance ( Korean . 친절한 금자씨 , Chinjeolhan geumjassi ; German: "Kindhearted Frau Geum-ja") is after Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance from 2002 and the award-winning cult film Oldboy from 2003, the third part of a loosely linked film trilogy on the subject Revenge of the South Korean director Park Chan-wook .

action

Note: This is a chronological summary, the plot is told in the film by individual episodes offset in time.

Lee Geum-ja unintentionally becomes pregnant at the age of 18 and confides in her former class teacher, Mr. Baek, who has always been friendly towards her. Out of desperation, she asks him to grant her asylum, as she cannot stay with her divorced mother or the father of her child. Mr. Baek finally takes the young woman into his home, but she finds out that Mr. Baek leads a double criminal life: he kidnaps children and then extorts high demands for ransom , although he does not release the children at all. Rather, he kills her after he has videotaped her "signs of life" needed to blackmail her.

At the age of 19, Geum-ja is finally forced to help kidnap five-year-old Won-mo. Mr. Baek kills the boy and demands from Geum-ja that she confess to the crime and report to the authorities, otherwise he will kill her newborn too. The investigating police officer has serious doubts about Geum-ja's guilt, but under public pressure she is sentenced to life imprisonment in a women's prison. In prison she forges plans for revenge. She proves to be extremely helpful towards her fellow prisoners, as she takes care of their problems. She poisoned the universally hated tyrannical inmate with bleach after she had mistreated several cellmates for a long time and forced them into sexual services. As a result of this deed, several women who were also arrested are indebted to Geum-jas. From then on, she is called "witch" by some of the inmates, while others call her "kindhearted Mrs. Geum-ja".

After thirteen and a half years in prison, Geum-ja was finally released from prison in 2004, driven by visions and the desire to kill Mr. Baek. She begins to carry out her plan and seeks out her former inmates who actually support her. So she got a place to stay and a weapon, which she had forged according to the plans of a former North Korean spy who was captured . She mainly makes her living in a pastry shop , while she goes looking for her child, whom Mr. Baek once put up for adoption . When she locates the adoptive parents in Australia , she travels to her daughter without further ado, gets to know her and takes her back to South Korea for a short time . Little does she suspect that Jenny, her daughter, is also haunted by visions that drive her to her home country South Korea.

Back in South Korea, she confides in Geun-shik, an apprentice confectioner who has visibly fallen in love with Geum-ja, and lets him know about her plans. Soon she will determine the current residence of Mr. Baek. Meanwhile, a former inmate makes Mr. Baek's lover to pave the way for Geum-ja's revenge plans. Geum-ja, however, is watched by the former prison chaplain, who, worried that their rehabilitation will fail, visits Mr. Baek and informs him of Geum-ja's release. Mr. Baek realizes that he must act to save his skin and, in turn, places two hit men on Geum-ja. But his plan fails, because Geum-ja manages to kill both killers with her new firearm.

Meanwhile, Geum-ja's accomplice narcotics Mr. Baek's dinner so that Geum-ja finds him motionless in his apartment. Together with her accomplice, she ties and gags the murderer, and they both take him to an abandoned school in the mountains. Geum-ja discovers a letter from Jenny, in which she describes her feelings of revenge and thoughts of murder on her birth mother Geum-ja, since she was abandoned by her, and demands that her mother apologize three times to her. Since Geum-ja already knew the content of the letter, she succeeds in regaining Jenny's trust when she explains to her - interpreting through the tied Mr. Baek - how everything happened at the time. She shows feelings for the first time in a long time and does not kill the child murderer, although she could. She lets the defenseless, bound and gagged Mr. Baek live, but puts a bullet in his foot, rethinks and changes her plans for revenge.

In Mr. Baek's apartment, she searches for evidence of her innocence in the infanticide she was wrongly convicted of at the time, and finds various video footage of other kidnapped and killed children. She presented the material to the police officer, who at the time was not entirely convinced of her guilt. Thereupon the two invite the relatives of the five murdered children to the school in which Mr. Baek is being held and ask them whether they want to leave him to justice or to take revenge on him in collective vigilante justice . After a lengthy discussion, the parents decide in favor of vigilante justice and, in a lottery procedure, give everyone involved the opportunity to take personal revenge on their children's killer. One after the other, all the bereaved devote themselves to the murderer with various weapons, wearing plastic raincoats to protect themselves from traces of blood. After numerous attacks, Mr. Baek finally dies after the grandmother of one of his victims rammed her grandson's children's scissors into his neck. Everyone involved agreed to keep quiet and buried his remains in a nearby forest. Geum-ja fires the two bullets intended for his death at his grave in his face. Afterwards everyone celebrates their satisfaction with coffee and cake in the pastry shop where Geum-ja works.

Reviews

“The (after 'Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance' and 'Oldboy') poetic conclusion to director Park Chan-Wook's revenge trilogy as a visually often broken ethical meditation on the nature of vengeance. An overwhelming film whose style and beauty cast a spell. "

- Lexicon of international film

“With high heels, bright red lips and wicked eye shadow, Geum-ja cold-heartedly demands help from prison friends to get revenge on her ex-lover - the real child murderer, who also turns out to be a serial offender. But instead of freeing yourself from hatred and complicity, Geum-ja, as the ominous redeemer, puts the beast in front of the desperate parents of the dead children as punishment. 'Lady Vengeance' becomes an oppressive lesson about the self-destructive effects of vigilante justice. Conclusion: cult director Park Chan-wook presents a fascinating art-house film on the subject of revenge and redemption. "

- Cinema

“Park Chan-wook, who is adored for films like 'Old Boy', shines here with crazy ideas, great pictures and daring atrocities - but when he then lets the parents of all the children who have been killed line up for a collective lynching of the killer and they do Whipped up to action with videos of the tied up kids, one is also quite repulsed by the lurid morality of the film. "

- The mirror

“Lady Vengeance is no less violent than the two predecessors, but the motive of vengeance is less important here. Instead, Geum-ja's path to alleged redemption is celebrated with furnishings that are coordinated down to the smallest detail, in which even the communal cell of a women's prison bathed in pink becomes an aesthetic eye-catcher. If the visual aesthetics in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance was still a part of the staging, here it is clearly in the foreground through a series of different effects and turns the film into a frenzy of images accompanied by harpsichord sounds. "

- Critic.de

Trivia

  • The Korean original film title translates as "good-hearted / friendly Geum-ja". Geum-ja received the reputation of being a kind-hearted woman in prison because she donated a kidney to a fellow prisoner .
  • The topic of kidney donation also plays a central role in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance , the first part of the loosely linked film trilogy by director Park Chan-wook.
  • The sentence "There are good and bad child abductions [...]" also comes from "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance".

Awards and nominations

  • Little Golden Lion , the CinemAvvenire Award for Best Film and nomination for the Golden Lion for Chan-wook Park at the Venice International Film Festival
  • Blue Dragon Award for best film and best actress
  • Golden Kinnaree Award for Best Director at the International Bangkok Film Festival
  • Orient Express Section Grand Prize for Best Film on Fantasporto
  • Audience award for the best film in the cinema (worldwide) at the Sarasota Film Festival
  • Best Actress for Lee at the Cinemanila International Film Festival
  • Baek Sang Film for Best Actress at the Baek Sang Art Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Lady Vengeance . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2006 (PDF; test number: 108 444 K).
  2. ↑ Lady Vengeance. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ Criticism on Cinema.de
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Höbel in Der Spiegel from September 5, 2005
  5. ↑ Michael Kienzl on Critic.de from December 23, 2006