LADY VENGEANCE

Geum-ja spent thirteen years in prison for the kidnapping and murder of a child, a crime she did not commit, but for which she was blamed to cover a man she was particularly attached to and who instead framed her. During her detention, the woman had an exemplary behavior and was always kind and available to everyone. After serving her sentence, Geum-ja sets out to find the true culprit of the crime to take revenge. "Lady Vengeance" is a film that begins with a certain lightness, the first part, in fact, is pleasant and full of irony: we retrace the story of Geum-ja, sentenced to thirteen years in prison for the kidnapping and murder of a child, but we immediately understand that something is not right. During the years of imprisonment, her image as a model prisoner (almost a saint) impressed her fellow inmates, and it will be they who will help her once she is released from prison. The angelic Geum-ja, however, changes. Once out of prison, she is a new woman. A ruthless, terribly dark, and attractive woman. A femme fatale, lethal, and dangerous. She is a woman seeking revenge. The halo of sanctity completely disappears. The development of the story begins to complicate, and we wonder why she confessed to a crime she did not commit. But who is the real culprit? It is Choi Min-sik, the actor who played Daesoo in "Old Boy", remarkably convincing in the role of the viscous and abominable pedophile Baek. Affairs become terribly complicated, and the lightness disappears to make way for a gloomy reflection on the phenomenon of pedophilia. The pedophile is captured by Geum-ja, who learns of a horrible fact: taking responsibility for the murder of the child left the field free for the monster, who committed other atrocious crimes. It is therefore Geum-ja's duty to hand him over to the parents of the poor victims. Here we enter into reflection. The director is good at outlining the character and personality of the parents of the victim children, who immediately enter into conflict with each other: those who propose handing him over to the police, those who, logically, want to take justice into their own hands. In the end, they will (obviously) opt for the second choice. But let's not expect atrocious and bloody tortures. There is little physical violence in this film. The viewer would have wanted to see the pedophile massacred in the most diverse and original tortures, but Park prefers to show the faces and reactions of the parents in front of the videos of their little ones' tortures, the "lottery" to decide the order in which they will enter the room where Baek is locked up (a moment of total absurdity), and the burial of the master-pedophile's corpse. Here is the true violence of the film: the faces of the parents, destroyed by an indescribable pain, in front of the sufferings of their children. And here the debate can be unleashed: is their revenge justified? After a harsh debate, there remains one question: who is Geum-ja? A saint? A ruthless murderer? Maybe she is a bit of both: she is an ambiguous woman, without a doubt. We know her first as a twenty-year-old (rather uninhibited, given that she gets pregnant at twenty) with a thousand dreams to fulfill, then as an angel, then as the lady of vengeance. She is a woman who has suffered a lot, but she is also a woman who has made serious mistakes: she participated as Baek's accomplice in the kidnapping of the child; her confession, aimed at saving the life of a person very dear to her, leads to the death of other children; these skeletons in the closet make sure that the kidnapping and murder of Baek do not free her definitively from existential torments. Among the scenes to remember: the parents' dinner to "celebrate" with a decidedly mournful and melancholic tone, the birthday of one of the murdered children, and the final snowfall, of splendid whiteness that perhaps gives us a glimmer of hope and illuminates the future of our ambiguous and controversial protagonist. There is one last thing to say. As with the previous films, perhaps even more so here, the photography is splendid, to the point that in some sequences you can lose the speeches because you can remain enchanted by the beauty of the images.