Film: Park Chan-Wook's LADY VENGEANCE

Just Desserts: LADY VENGEANCE Is Worth Saving Room For

Looking back at the previous films in Korean director Park Chan-Wook's 'Vengeance' Trilogy, kicked off with SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE then OLDBOY, one has cause to not be so keen on taking in the third film, LADY VENGEANCE, without your hands half parted over your eyes. Both of those films toiled in such dark waters of the human revenge mechanism - complete with decapitations, battery operated torture, bloody hammers and sloppily eaten live octopi - that it was a wonder anyone made it to the other end safely. But there was a gradual build in Chan-Wook's storytelling (one we Americans missed out on as part 2 was released here before part 1) of the lengths people can go when they've been wronged. MR. VENGEANCE was a hot and sweaty mass of blood and bad choices that gave way to OLDBOY's shine and dark swagger. The latter tied the hero to a horrible secret that made it hard for the viewer to accept that things could ever be 'okay' in the end. That chapter, however, concluded with the visual of a beautiful snowstorm large enough to clear the air and cleanse the pallet enough for its sumptuous and filling conclusion LADY VENGEANCE.
As the film begins we meet Guem-Ja (Lee Yeong-Ae), the 'lady' in question, as she is released from prison after serving a 13 year stint for her involvement in the killing of a little boy. She harshly turns down the tradition of eating tofu upon release, to signify the beginning of "living a sin free life", because she knows that with the revenge plan she has cooking in her mind her sin free days are a long ways off . It seems that Guem-Ja took the fall for her boss and didn't have to lose 13 years of her life AND 13 years of knowing the newborn daughter she had to give up. So she sets out calling on favors from women she helped in prison, where she quietly earned the nickname 'Kind Hearted Ms. Guem-Ja', and by working in a cake shop to earn money for the endeavor. Her networking and cake baking skills picked up in prison combine to deliver a dish to her former boss that is best served moist and sweet.
It is in this giant mixing bowl filled with 1 cup vengeance, 1 cup femininity, a spoonful of motherhood, a pinch of sass and a cube of style for taste, that the film really takes its form. Unlike its lead-ins, LADY VENGEANCE is not intense but is instead wistful and patient in its examination of the powerful fury that can erupt in even the softest of people. Its mood is bouncy and the visuals are swathed in the soft colors of a romantic comedy. Working as a classic 'woman's' film like MILDRED PIERCE but dipping its pen in the bloody ink of 'revenge' titles like MS.45 and KILL BILL, the film plays its heavy themes with a light laugh and a gentle touch. Lee Yeong-Ae plays the lead with a soft focus behind the fiery red brushed on her eyelids. Her Guem-Ja is a quiet woman who can hardly believe the position that she is in, or how she got there, but what is done must be done. The drowsiness of her face shows a woman who has lay awake for 13 years with a worry that must be taken care of if she is to ever sleep soundly again.
While building the plan Guem-Ja reunites with her daughter and realizes that inciting payback is a horrible thing to teach a child (who unbeknownst to her has own daggers out for Mommy). Will committing such a finite wrong EVER make things right? When it appears that the film is going to let Guem-Ja fulfill her wishes cold it delivers a delicious twist that invites the idea of selfish revenge as a way of making things right, for the better of the world, but with even more consequences. Perhaps that is the film, and the trilogy's, ultimate purpose. Revenge is a weed that will grow threefold and blanket the lives of all those involved. The lesson in this trilogy seems to be: cut the weed and it will just come back, do nothing and it takes over everything. Can redemption and peace ever come out of having to balance the scales? LADY VENGEANCE provides an answer that is thankfully buried in layers of blood red icing and dark cake sweet enough to help us swallow it.

Film: Wong Kar-Wai's 2046

Ahhh memories. Those misty, water colored boxes that we stack endlessly in the warehouse of our mind. Rows upon rows, each labeled and cross catalogued: '1995- Summer- Love- First Kiss- Joy', '1998- Winter- Love- Break-up letter- Sadness'. We take the time to store these elements everyday.The fresh smell of rain, the sweet taste of a peach, the wonderful touch of silk. Countless memories end up used and dumped; not relevant enough to make it to the archives. Others get the full treatment. Labled in big letters and put on a low shelf for easy access later; these are the ones that we return to like a novel we keep re-reading. Opening up these boxes produces more than just a faint image. These boxes have sight, sound and smell. Colors, a wafty song heard on the radio, cigarette smoke on the curtains. These memories transport us back in time for however long we want. Be careful or you might just want to stay there forever.
No filmmaker can visualize (and even fetishize) the power of memory like Wong Kar Wai. From Days Of Being Wild to Chungking Express, Fallen Angels to Happy Together, his vision (and to be fair that of his celebrated cinematographer Christopher Doyle) is one of people stuck living in a year that no longer exists. These folks float around like bored fish in an aquarium, content on being stuck forever in the world they used to inhabit, afraid of living in a world they know nothing about.
In his new film 2046, Wong Kar Wai reaquaints us with dapper journalist-cum-socialite Chow Mo Wan (played again with stark Clark Gable coolness by Tony Leung) who we first met in Wong's In The Mood For Love. Still smarting from the rejection of Su Li Zhen (played by Maggie Cheung) Chow now passes the time doing pulp fiction work and living in a flophouse called the Oriental Hotel. It is here that the vast majority of 2046's story unfolds.When moving into the flophouse Chow requests room 2046 only to have it not finished. He takes room 2047 and gets used to it. He then watches as a series of beautiful women (a virtual who's who of Asia's finest actresses) all move into and inhabit room 2046 over time. Chow meets Lulu (Carina Lau) an aging callgirl stuck loving the memory of a deceased man. Chow woos Bai Ling (Ziyi Zhang proving herself again as a fine new actress) a callgirl herself but one looking ahead and directly at Chow himself. Chow talks to Wang Jing Wen (Faye Wong), the daughter of the flophouse manager, who is carrying on an affair with a man in Japan despite her father's wishes. Finally, Chow reminisces about another Su Li Zhen (Gong Li) a mysterious gambler who reveals next to nothing about herself but fills him with familiarity . Chow's relationships to these women is tinged like a perfume by the haunting memory of the first Su Li Zhen. But where most memories pull us back into the past like anchors, Chow's does something interesting for him; it creates a past, present and future all revolving around the number 2046.
That number was the hotel room that Chow and Su carried on their clandestine meetings years before. While spending time with Wang he begins to work on a sci-fi pulp novel with her. The novel's time period? The year 2046, of course. More than just a clever plot device the presence of 2046 creates a bizarre quandry: Chow's actions in the present are affected by the memories of his past which has given birth to the future where everyone goes to forget the past and never returns (wrap your head around that one!). Every one of the women in Chow's life has a role in the future as designed- for- pleasure androids that cross the path of CC1966 (Chang Chen) a character devised after Chow himself who is trying to leave 2046 and everything it encapsulates. Through this character Chow can take a step back and view his relationship to all of the women around him, past and present.
It is within this vision of the future that we truly meet the character of Chow. As a writer his work asks that he plug into his past experiences to create new ones. We see that he is not just haunted by the memory of Su but of every woman that crosses his path. Will this opportunity to move ahead change his pattern of behaviour or will Chow choose to live in the world of 2046; past, present and future? The joy in the film is coming along for Wong Kar Wai's vivid ride.
Wong creates a simple canvas out of his vision of the future that doesn't distract from the stunning visuals that fill the central time period (late 1960's to be exact) but is instead a companion piece to all of the romantic action and a home for us all to imagine our problems and wishes ending up later. The film stays with you because Wong shows us aspects of our own memories, different as they are, that we rarely admit to others we noticed ourselves. The devil is in the details and Wong doesn't mind reminding us that obsession can stunt and diminish our own ability to enter the future awaiting us. We all have someone to get over. We all have someone we don't want to forget. 2046 reminds us that memories only have as much power as we give them but that that same power can be enough to take us into amazing uncharted territory but only if we can be brave enough to take the first step out of the past.

Directed by Wong Kar-Wai
(China/Hong Kong, 2005, 127min)
English Subtitles

Film: Daniel Gordon's A STATE OF MIND

Thousands gather to practice routines for the massive North Korean celebration Mass Games. The film A State of Mind chronicles the festival.
Over the last 50 years, the communist state of North Korea has been putting together an eye-popping, people-filled spectacular called the Mass Games.
Utilizing more than 80,000 gymnasts and countless others with technical verve and ability, the Mass Games is as extravagant as a Super Bowl halftime show. But it is filled with participants who bring dedication, class, honor and a little spilled blood to the set.
The gymnasts and mosaic board-flippers spin, leap, kick and explode in a series of colorful, human controlled moving seas, waving flags, synchronized patterns and, most importantly, living examples of loyalty and devotion to North Korea, communism and their great leader Kim Jon Il.
While watching Daniel Gordon’s BBC documentary, A State of Mind, I was reminded of how little I actually knew about North Korea. Two fingers on my hand represent the knowledge of the country— Kim Jon Il and frightening nuclear capabilities — I carried into the film.
It is perhaps this blind spot that made the film intriguing and frightening to me in equal measures. Gordon’s cameras were allowed unprecedented access to film in North Korea.
The crew included translators and access to sacred public areas.
Gordon focuses his lens on the story of two young gymnasts, Pak Hyon Sun and Kim Song Yon. Both are devoted schoolgirls who seem to exhibit the perfect adolescent life under the General’s reign. At school they learn about the predicted assault by the United States on their soil, hone their English (as both a tool and as a weapon), and spend 80 percent of their time in the Mass Games club where they, and just about every other nimble student, perfect their gymnastic skills in the hopes that they will be good enough to be asked to perform in the “socialist realism extravaganza.”
We watch both girls through multiple practices (all done on concrete and with no regard to aches and pains) where the smiling girls learn that they succeed “as individualism disappears and group power develops.” Every synchronized leap and flip is another link in the chain of self-reliance.
These movements are also another step away from the unwanted imperialism of the United States and those who oppose the perfect communist state.
These lessons spill over into the girls’ home life as well. We watch as family time becomes a time to help each other, learn about each other and build a unit so tight that it can be used as a defense for their state. When electricity goes out nightly for hours at a time (North Korea, despite seeming like a show-off still struggles economically), curses toward the United States are heard as excuses for the way things remain and a reason for everyone to work harder to overcome them. The previous actions of the United Stares are what drive North Koreans toward beautiful perfection and love for their leader and home.
It was this sudden lesson that tinged the wonder of watching thousands of people coming together for one amazing artistic expression.
It was a bitter pill full of fear for what a million united minds could be capable of, especially when anger and resentment are the bubbling at the core.
A State of Mind shows us a place changed by the past, happy with their present time, and prepared for the negative expectations of what is to come.
The Mass Games put an exquisite mask on to a face that has been long awaiting a proper unveiling.
Yet it remains to be seen if the scars that the mask has been hiding are being worn with pride or with reflection to those who may have caused them.

Directed by Daniel Gordon
2004/N. Korea/93 min.
Korean with English Subtitles