Lady Vengeance

Park Chan-Wook just has the sauce. It’s so interesting how he was making movies that are very against korean norms, but all his characters are very korean. He introduced unfamiliar tropes that are unexpected for Korean characters but everything about them was so korean, their thoughts their ideals the way they choose to phrase everything, he maintained that korean identity. I debated whether I should highlight my favorite gut wrenching revelations in the movie because I didn’t want to flag this for spoilers, but I really can’t not talk about how perfect the 1-3 reveal on the scissors was. The phone accessories reveal also knocked me out, I was sick all the way to the end. I also loved the children’s items being the only thing in color at the final desert scene in the bakery. I wasn’t sure how long he’d keep the B&W going I thought it would end there, but then the way it built up to the snow scene where the white stood out more to parallel the theme from the beginning.. brilliant. PCW is just brilliant, just unapologetically himself and doesn’t force his vision for the idea of being a unique auteur, he really just does it for the love of the game. And shoutout to the way he writes women, this film had the biggest female cast of any korean movie i’ve seen and he gave them so much diversity that’s uncommon even now. Realizing that Oldboy failed to have good female characters, and correcting it with your next films by also adding a female co-writer is just awesome.