Park Chan-wook's Lady Vengeance is an immaculately framed, incredibly gripping psychological thriller. It is a bleak and gory film, but less unrelentingly disturbing than the other films in Park's Vengeance Trilogy. This is a film where Park is at the height of his powers, using complex plotting and an incredible style to tell his perverse tale. With a bright, contrasting colour scheme (primary colours at first, more black and white later on), and imaginative transitions, Lady Vengeance looks amazing. The score too is fantastic, one of the best soundtracks of the 2000s, and it provides an evocative sense of melancholy whilst tinged with elements of celebratory symphonies. Lady Vengeance is an intense and cold movie, but it's smothered by a warm jacket of dark humour, harmonious revenge, and the odd moment of joy.

Lee Yeong-ae stars as the titular lead, Lee Geum-ja, and provides a memorable performance that anchors all the excesses of Lady Vengeance's style. Geum-ja is a compelling hero, with a thirteen year revenge plan that slowly unfolds over the course of the film. She has a cold look to her, using makeup that emphasises her lack of emotion and a still expression that she tries hard to maintain. She has a job to complete and will do a lot to achieve her goals. The Korean title of the film translates as Kind-hearted Ms. Geum-ja, which emphasises the many people she helped through her years of plotting revenge. She wears blood-red eye shadow to make herself look less kind and hide her true nature, as being seen as kind is something she'll willingly sacrifice for revenge. She ultimately wants forgiveness and redemption, and thinks revenge is the path towards that. She dreams of her revenge, fantasising a man as a dog, to be killed and tortured for as long as her sleep will allow her. At times Geum-ja seems a delusional spirit but she's always willing to head towards what she feels is the right thing. She has complete control of her situation and her revenge, and she wants it to be beautiful - everything must be pretty in this dreamlike vengeance. Even when things don't go according to plan, a beautiful woman with a bleeding lip, messed-up hair, and a fierce expression can still point a gun straight at your forehead. Even a gunshot through the skull can be beautiful in this world of vengeance. This doesn't mean that Geum-ja is always strong however, she's sometimes fragile and able to become vulnerable, but she's always able to stand up for herself because she's confident in her plan. When she finally faces the man who wronged her, she gains the delirious look of a maddened woman. We see the bulging face of hate and an expression that signals a desire to make him suffer a thousand deaths.

Geum-ja is a protagonist who cries, and she draws strength through being connected to her humanity and never losing herself to sin (through truly repenting). Is she some kind of angel? She shines (literally) and guides the characters through moral uncertainty. This is a film of prayer and also of celebration (conflating release from prison with Christmas, and successful revenge with a birthday). Geum-ja forces people to watch their children's suffering, because you need to suffer yourself before you can understand the need to commit revenge (an eye for an eye). Lady Vengeance is inflected by Christian ideas, with angelic themes, lit candles, sins and repentance, and the constant presence of innocent white. From the opening titles, filled with dusty white and creamy white images, that colour permeates Lady Vengeance. Different shades and textures of white appear with varying significance within the film. We get snowy white, tofu white, furry white, angelic white, and the white morning light which shines through a window. Lady Vengeance is a film of sin, and specifically of the sins of an angel who can't wear white.

There's a lost girl in a desert, with a mother seeking her out. Geum-ja is wronged, but her daughter is wronged too. Geum-ja is unable to raise her daughter and the man responsible has made a mother be unable to see or comfort her own child. Geum-ja seeks to reclaim her connection to her daughter because she feels overwhelming guilt. Her elaborate revenge made her be unable to see her child, and this decision brings her to tears. Her only sign of regret, and perhaps weakness, is her hesitation to further carry out her plan when faced with the daughter she lost. Geum-ja desperately wants her revenge, but her daughter has also been wronged. If Geum-ja does get revenge, it'll only have been worth it if her daughter is avenged. Geum-ja lives a lie in her quest for revenge, and her true self only appears in her slowly emerging new family. Lady Vengeance is more than a single person's quest for revenge but a quest to right the wrongs done by one person against so many.

The Vengeance Trilogy probes deeply the nature of revenge, and Lady Vengeance seriously questions the impact it can have on somebody. Once you decide to take revenge your life effectively ends and you become a new person. It becomes a game of pretence, accompanied by the eventual cold revelation to others that you were pretending. Everybody wants to commit revenge but most will never act on it. Most motivations for revenge are unjustified or uninformed, with people often unaware of why someone would wrong them (like a daughter who hates her mother's absence but doesn't know the reason). Life doesn't go the way you want, and we lie to ourselves that we can do anything if we will it. We're actually stuck with what life deals us and we have to fight every second to regain control. Geum-ja is dealt a terrible life, vows revenge, and commits to the act that she will perform until she gets justice. She becomes a radically different person inside and outside of prison, but both personalities are a facade. She even pretends to love, because that can be done if you're dedicated enough. Debts accumulate, and everyone pays back by helping with the vengeance or being a victim of it. But once revenge is nearly complete, an acknowledgement slowly dawns that the pleasure of it will soon come to an end. Once revenge is complete, can someone return to who they were, or are they forever changed? There's a moment from Lady Vengeance that stuck with me for years after I first saw it - a brutal, unloving sex scene where a man forces(?) himself upon his partner. It's a powerfully visceral moment played strangely, for it's a knowing sacrifice that's part of an elaborate, righteous vengeance. It's a scene of pain and yet it blurs the line between who has the power in the scene - the person holding the other down, or the person allowing themselves to be held down knowing sweet revenge will follow? Lady Vengeance is a film of tears, of characters who feel their sadness will never end unless they get revenge, and that crying is twisted into an evil, vengeful smile. It's a film of women with bleeding lips enacting revenge on the men who wronged them, but the degradation of the soul increases with every strike.

Unlike the other films in The Vengeance Trilogy, which focus on individuals and their personal desires for revenge, Lady Vengeance deals with society's use of revenge. Society is already obsessed with evil and revenge (it's why we watch revenge thrillers) and Lady Vengeance shows multiple cameras staring at a criminal re-enacting murder, the exact kind of sick spectacle we've now come to accept. Later on, Lady Vengeance presents a cross section of characters with a difficult moral choice: lawful justice or righteous justice? It blurs the line between what is fair and what is right, what can be done and what should be done. Good people, innocent people, will decide to become a monster to get revenge on a monster. As a collective they will make a decision for vigilante justice which exceeds each individual's fear of committing wrongs; people will always go with the herd. Yet the characters must still take their revenge individually and overcome their personal morals. Everyone wants revenge because everyone has their own pain and suffering, and who are we to judge others who feel wronged. Many characters own little symbols that bind memories of their lost children to this reality, and it gives them something to hold onto as they look up to heaven (knowing their own actions condemn them to hell). A lot of blood is spilled into that bucket, and every drop probably felt worth it. The Vengeance Trilogy is very fatalistic, showing how we are all doomed to be consumed by our desire for revenge, but Lady Vengeance proposes something different to the previous films. It suggests that rather than overcoming the basic human desire for revenge, perhaps we just need to apply it and justify it righteously. It doesn't provide any easy answers, but it shows that revenge can sometimes lead to a tiny amount of hope.

After a quiet singsong in the dark, a depressing celebration given every aspect of the context, Lady Vengeance enters a final few scenes of hope. It still has a tragic ending, but Geum-ja has given up her vengeful identity (and eye shadow) and returned to herself. She hasn't been able to find redemption, but she has been released from her plan (as represented by the tofu-like cake). The Vengeance Trilogy is a depressing series of films, but Lady Vengeance wraps it up with a little bit of potential hope. There's no hope for Geum-ja, who has gone down a path of no return, but there is hope that her daughter can live a life of purest white. Lady Vengeance is a great examination of revenge and justice, capping off with a moment of partial joy. This world is tough, and we'll all be wronged, but the price of your soul is what revenge will take. When we get to the end of Lady Vengeance, we get to an ending filled with hope in falling snow. There's a girl yet to be corrupted by sadness and suffering. Live happy and without pain; be white, be pure.

Side-note: This film shouldn't be called Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. That is an alternate English-language title which is only used in some countries. I dislike it because it over-emphasises the connections to The Vengeance Trilogy and doesn't allow Lady Vengeance to stand on its own.

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