Geopolitics of Film: The Case of Lady Vengeance
- Eleonore Dlugosz Donnen
- 5 hours ago
- 8 min read
Eyes on South Korean Cinema
여자가 한을 품으면 서리가 내린다
If a woman harbors han, frost will fall
“The concept of han (한) has been invoked as crucial to understanding the Korean character. A supposedly untranslatable term, it denotes a uniquely Korean sense of profound sorrow, regret, resentment, rage and other negative emotions that are all bound up inside an individual as well as the people as a whole. It has been claimed that modern Koreans inherited it from deep tradition, as a collective emotional memory of their ancestors’ experiences of historical traumas, including many foreign invasions throughout the centuries.”
Lady Vengeance, or one of the greatest examples of han (한), was released in 2005 in South Korea by Park Chan-wook. The latter unveiled a work of extreme violence in which brutality is infused and built up at length. Geum-ja, a young woman convicted of kidnapping and murdering a child, a crime she confessed to under duress, is released from prison, where she gained the reputation of a saintly figure. This Korean Mary Magdalene has the visage of an angel, but behind this mask lies a complete and methodical plan for revenge. A violent yet graceful work that left a lasting impression on the Korean psyché.
Three Executors, Among Them One Redeemed Angel.
To understand this chef d’oeuvre, it is essential to contextualize it among its peers. Lady Vengeance is the last film in Park Chan Wook's revenge trilogy. It explores revenge not just as a vulgar, tragic tool but as an impulse that must be taken into consideration. The triptych begins with Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, followed by Old Boy, and culminates in the great and unique Lady Vengeance. While Oldboy reigns in the collective psyché as the ultimate work of vengeance surpassing Lady Vengeance, the latter remains more subtle and under-observed. Letterboxd data shows us that while Oldboy managed to reach 1.89 million watches, with over 300,000 reviews, Lady Vengeance only garnered 266,000 views and nearly 40,000 reviews.
Where Old Boy feeds with a shocking narrative, it is the subject of spectacular ultraviolence that leaves a lasting impression on the viewer. Oldboy embraces a dramaturgy masculine vertigo between confinement and rage, as the film follows a logic of escalation. As for Lady Vengeance, the violence is organized and prepared almost ritualistically. These two works represent very distinct forms of revenge, one excessive, the other controlled.
In this sense, these words will attempt to rival the success of Old Boy by trying to elevate Lady Vengeance to the same level of relevance. Lady Vengeance closes this trilogy, and Park Chan-wook does not seem to want to amplify the violence; he seems to want to calm it down in order to better reveal its depth. This triptych begins in rage but ends in a cold ceremony.
A Korean Magdalene?
Religion never appears here as a tool for salvation but rather as a battlefield where morality confronts punitive justice. Geum-ja embodies the exemplary penitent, employing a methodical strategy that oscillates between media sainthood and relentless calculation. In prison, she became a figure akin to Mary Magdalene. Park Chan-wook uses her, and her symbolic legitimacy, as a moral ambiguity, with her pale skin, tearful gaze, measured gestures, and aura of purity, which give this character a sacred quality. In the filmed scenes, Geum-ja appears in a cold light, with large white snowy spaces that make her look like an angel, and a contrast then blends with touches of red on her lips, her eyes, and in the snow, heralding the bloody coming break with religious morality.
Public confession and rebuilding one's reputation play a role from the outset for the spectator. This holiness is performative, as Geum-ja transforms this penance into an instrument of revenge. Plenty of Christian references, between confessions and forgiveness, are distorted. Confession is supposed to purify the soul, but in this film, it becomes more harmful than protective, and even forgiveness, which is supposed to relieve the burden of evil, does not remove the anger or the need for reparation for the harm caused. This manipulation of religious codes attacks religion's ability to curb such violence through Christian morality. For Park Chan Wook, religion is insufficient to deal with Geum-ja's injustice.
To take this a step further, Park Chan-wook seems to transform religion into an implicit political aspect. In the South Korean context, historical memory is deeply linked to historical trauma, and faith cannot replace the justice that Koreans need to recover from the past historical tragedies committed. Religion is not an antidote to the evil that has been done. And this figure of Geum-ja as Mary Magdalene represents purity but in the service of tactical and severe revenge.
The Red on Her Face, Her Armor
After briefly mentioning Geum-ja's red lips and eyes, let's take a few seconds to focus on the makeup that Park Chan Wook has created for this angel of vengeance. Amidst all the white, black and violence, where only dichotomy seems to exist, the blood-red makeup acts as a form of armor. From the very first shots, her face is ghostly pale, but her red lips reveal a mastery of a body seething with energy after years of silent planning. Later, she decides to add the red to her pupils, foreshadowing the ultraviolence she is about to display. Her makeup is her strategy, channelling her fear and anger, making her powerful and rendering tangible the tension between her snow-white innocence and her flamboyant red resolve. Red, the color of the blood that will flow, her painted face is never neutral; it is Geum-ja's armor.
Beyond the State: The Vengeance
The central theme here is justice and its punitive aspect. A confrontation between a perpetrator and a victim, with justice as a witness to this confrontation, takes on the role of observer and relinquishes its ability to protect citizens, echoing the way in which historical traumas have not been properly addressed. In 2005, South Korea was emerging from a long authoritarian past in which the collective memory was marked by structural violence. Park Chan-wook personifies this through Geum-ja's revenge, which is not just a settling of scores but a reflection on the role of the state and the failure of its judicial institutions.
The incarceration of the meditative and roguish Geum-ja reveals a judicial system quick to designate scapegoats rather than seek out those responsible. This observation is reminiscent of another Korean chef d’oeuvre, Bong Joon Ho's Memories of Murder, a film that shows how the police are overwhelmed by a series of crimes against children and fail to investigate, committing serious errors in the process. Like Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook questions the inability of institutions to guarantee the protection of children, focusing less on the state of the police and more on the autonomy of the individual to enact revenge.
Both works address violence against children, but whereas Memories of Murder focuses on the investigation, Lady of Vengeance shows us a woman after the justice system attempts to function and decides to contact the victims' parents, highlighting their outrage. The scene where the families confront the evidence of the crimes against their children is key; it is a collective deliberation, a group decision. The culprit must die. Revenge is cathartic because it becomes a symbolic collective instrument, redistributing violence; it is a shared traumatic memory and, dare I say, a collective duty of remembrance for their children.
After reading numerous analyses on this redistribution of political violence, I learn that Park Chan-wook introduces key anti-imperialist elements from the history of the Korean Peninsula. According to scholar Han Sang-eon’s, whom I found thanks to the blog In Review, the name Geum-ja (金子) can be read as Kaneko in Japanese, in homage to the anarchist Kaneko Fumiko who was imprisoned after attempting to assassinate members of the Japanese imperial army. Or, pronounced phonetically in English as Geum-ja, it evokes the name Goldman, this time referring to Emma Goldman, an anarchist-feminist figure who stood up against the state. These two women can be seen as powerful references that personify the central character of Lady Vengeance, who carries the weight of her vengeance on her shoulders but also, in her very name, historical significance and, de facto, her duty to avenge. The camera used by the perpetrator to film his crimes against children is also a Mitsubishi camera, referring to the exploitation of Korean civilians under Japanese colonization for the benefit of Japanese industry and, thus, of the imperialist state. The antagonist with this camera becomes the vector of structural violence; Geum-ja's revenge on him is a means of delivering impossible justice. It is political and historical revenge.
From Observer to Collaborator: The Spectator and Your Morals
The role of revenge is central, and we are spectators, but how should we respond to this ultraviolence? The question arises: if the state fails to protect the most vulnerable, what are we left with and what legitimacy can violence outside the state have? Geum-ja wants revenge, and so do the children's parents. She asks them, Do you want to participate in the killing of the culprit or not?
The setting of this collective deliberation is chilling; in this abandoned school, the place is just another reference to children who have been abandoned by the state. In the scene, the parents’ faces are grave, yet their desire for reparation through the plans becomes palpable. We are judges. If they agree to kill, we judge them; if they refuse, we judge them. Becoming a shared process, Geum-ja's sorrow is no longer the only thing at stake. You are also involved in witnessing the violence shown in such detail with the preparations of the funeral ceremony. Moments that allow you to feel the jubilation of having justice be gratifying and potentially accepted. .
As a spectator, you are complicit in watching. Do you feel a guilty pleasure in seeing the criminal face his end? Are you morally alarmed? Lady Vengeance is a test of conscience, even for you. After watching it, you will have to answer the following: Do you agree or do you condemn? Once again, this is part of Park Chan-wook's desire to redistribute this violence, and it even passes through you, the spectator; your own eyes; and your own morals.
Snow and Blood: Korean and Japanese
As I approached Lady Vengeance, a great number of references came to mind, but one work stood out to me, prompting a comparison: Lady Snowblood by Toshiya Fujita. Despite the anaphora of their names, it must be remembered that they were made in different contexts and that the two states do not reflect the same historical traumas at all. Nevertheless, the resemblance between the two women is striking. They embody methodical revenge, wearing their anger like a second skin.
Both women have a connection to prison and injustice. Lady Snowblood is named Yuki and is born in prison when her mother dies in childbirth after being convicted of murder. Lady Snowblood is raised by her mother's friends in prison, who will later help her in her revenge once she becomes a woman. Like Geum-ja, Yuki leaves prison with a mission of revenge.
Both women act in snowy settings, where the red blood of their vengeance stains the white snow. Snow is an important element of the setting in both films, accentuating purity.
The word ‘sisters’ is the most appropriate choice for these two chef-d'oeuvres, these two girls, daughters born of vengeance, who grew up being methodical and placing their duty above all else. Revenge is a recurring theme in Asian cinema, but if you want to enter this world, these two sisters will be the keys that open the doors to Asian revenge cinema for you.
Lady Vengeance and Lady Snowblood,
Angels of death,
Daughters of bloodshed,
Sisters of vengeance.
Park Chan-wook attempts to elevate revenge to the status of a political ritual in which Geum-ja, in the guise of a Korean Mary Magdalene, embodies the contrast between purity and punitive justice. Lady Vengeance is a film about female ultraviolence, but one that echoes a collective Korean memory that has not had time to heal. The immaculate snow, the red of blood, and the calculated gestures – everything converges towards revenge as inevitable. As a viewer, you do not come out unscathed.
You need to watch this chef-d'oeuvre.
Comments