Scandal Minus Sensationalism: The Girl on the Train

A few months ago, I panned The Headless Woman, a quiet, compact foreign film about a woman, her psychology, and a crime that might or might not have happened. Today I'm here to praise The Girl on the Train, a film with a similar concept, but superior execution. This 2009 French production may derive from a 2004 scandal but, director, André Téchiné, has produced neither a Law and Order, "ripped from the headlines" entertainment nor an over-earnest issue picture. The Girl on the Train may tell us something about the ills of modern French society, but it's far more eloquent about individual problems.

Jeanne Fabre (Émilie Dequenne) lives in a Parisian suburb with her mother, Louise (Catherine Deneuve). For all her efforts – hours pounding pavement, enduring interviews, and scouring job listings – she can't find a job. She cuts an appealing figure with her roller blades, headphones, and casual clothes, but Jeanne's not a terribly happy girl. Nor is she very smart. When she's with her shady wrestler boyfriend, Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), she tells obvious lies, but manages to avoid noticing her beau's sideline in drugs. An hour into the film, Jeanne tells the police – and through them, the whole of France – a very big lie.

After Jeanne fibs her way into the national consciousness, one of the film's main subplots almost entirely vanishes. For the first fifty minutes, the film seems to be about Jeanne's relationship with Franck. The surprising end of the relationship appears to be a major catalyst for Jeanne's breakdown, but Franck is almost entirely absent in the film's second part. He has perhaps forty-five seconds of screen time. Those forty-five seconds are very affecting, but I can't help but wish The Girl on the Train had a slightly more elegant structure.

Though the movie's story belongs to Jeanne, The Girl on the Train devotes a fair portion of its running time to lawyer, Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), and his family. Though Blanc is a fine actor, the film's portrayal of Bleistein's dysfunctional family never quite convinces. Bleistein's indefatigable assistant, Judith (Ronit Elkabetz), is his son's ex-wife. Said son has an awful beard and a gruff manner; he's touchy, funny, irresponsible, and hard to accept as Judith's lover. Bleistein's thirteen-year-old grandson, Nathan (Jérémie Quaegebeur), alternates between callow and preternaturally wise; Quaegebeur acquits himself well, however, and surpasses the script's inconsistencies.

Midway through the film, The Girl on the Train tells us that Jeanne's claims have shocked the country and frenzied the media. Where a lesser film might give us shots of rallies, protests, and policemen, this one remains focused on the characters, not the crowds. If anything, the film becomes more sedate in its second act, which moves from Paris and the suburbs to Bleistein's country estate. If the manner of Jeanne's final epiphany feels slightly forced, we never doubt that she would eventually own up to her deception. Her "composition" of her apology/confession is an effective scene, as is her bleakly minimal entrance into a jail cell, though I'm not sure about Téchiné's decision to intercut the latter scene with Nathan's Bar Mitzvah.

Some might complain that The Girl on the Train is too oblique; we hear, but never see, Jeanne's false accusation and the director neglects to film several potentially dramatic scenes. I, however, was much taken with the movie's preference for psychology over spectacle and its way of showing the political as personal. Jeanne might seem to represent a nationwide "pathology," but we never forget that her problems, in the end, are her own. Téchiné never overreaches with grand statements or sententious proclamations. He lets the story speak and leaves interpretation to the audience.

Throughout this review, I've tried to avoid mentioning what exactly Jeanne lies about – what exactly (didn't) happen(ed) to "the girl on the train." Perhaps my reticence is unnecessary; anyone in the movie's French audience would know what to expect from Jeanne's quixotic crime. There's a fair deal of foreshadowing throughout the film's first hour, but I prefer not to divulge the movie's (open) secret. In my mind, the film becomes more interesting if you don't know quite what to expect. Even if one does have a general idea of the plot, Jeanne's crime, and her incompetence in staging it, remain stunning.

The Girl on the Train is neither a great nor an ambitious film; it is well-made, well-acted, and thought-provoking. It stands on the line between art house and popular cinema, and should please partisans of both styles.

Waiter, Pass the Czech

Hundreds, if not thousands, of films have attempted to address the various horrors of the twentieth century, from fascism and the Holocaust to communism and Stalinism. These movies tend to alternate between the ponderous and the campy, so it's a pleasure to find a production that deals seriously with these matters while remaining charming and even funny. The 2006 Czech film, I Served the King of England, came to American theaters for a few weeks in late 2008. If only it had received more attention here.

I Served the King of England opens with its "hero," the diminutive convict Jan Dite (Oldrich Kaiser), leaving a dreary Prague prison, where he has served fifteen years for an as-yet-undisclosed crime. The communist authorities relocate Dite to the border, where he works at renovating an abandoned and collapsing bar. As Dite works in the bar, he ponders his life and his long history as a waiter – most of the film consists of flashbacks to the life of a younger and more amoral Jan Dite (Ivan Barnev).

The first flashback begins as a faux silent film – young Dite, in black and white, selling frankfurters at a train station and speaking in title cards. Soon, however, the story of Dite's adventures in pre-WWII Czechoslovakia turns to color and sound. Dite gets a job at a bar, meets a fabulously rich industrialist, and manages to charm seemingly dozens of girls into bed. The young man seems to lead a charmed life, even if he can be just a tad unscrupulous, as when he trips up a waiter he despises and then takes his victim's job. Dite seems the classic picaresque rogue, at least until history intervenes.

In most stories of WWII, the hero is a brave foe of the Nazis – a soldier, a guerilla, a simple underground informant. Dite, however, manages to fall in love with a German schoolteacher (the only woman he has ever met shorter than he is), and ends up a collaborator – the sole waiter at a "scientific facility" (an elevated brothel) where the Germans hope to breed a new master race. In practice, this means Dite loiters with drink trays while a bevy of "Aryan" women frolic naked. Around this time, we start to notice just how Hitler-esque Dite's new mustache has grown. It seems our picaro has sold his soul.

After the war, Dite makes all the money he ever dreamed of – albeit in a shockingly nasty way – and founds his own hotel before karma, in the form of the communist authorities, catches up with him. The film returns to the "present" with Dite a poorer, but wiser and better, man. He's survived it all despite himself.

I Served the King of England is one of the funniest films I've seen of late. While most of the humor is sex-related or raunchy, the movie rarely veers into the vulgar. Much of the film parodies the rich and decadent of prewar Czech society, yet the satire is so gentle that we smile instead of clenching fists. There are moments, especially late in the film, of tragedy and horror, but young Dite's joie de vivre so dominates the film that we almost forget about them.

The silent sequence near the opening is hardly the only "unique" touch in, director, Jirí Menzel's film. While the film is rarely outright surreal, everything, from character tics to settings, is exaggerated just enough to seem unreal. The waiters are all perfectly strait-laced, the royalty unbelievably regal, the nudes quintessentially frolicsome, and the soldiers all complete automatons. The result is a highly mannered film, but one that, oddly enough, feels lighter than the sum of its affectations. The small exaggerations and distortions prepare the audience for the larger, more eyebrow-raising ones.

As much as I liked I Served the King of England, there are two technical problems I feel I must address. The first is the frequent use of crummy CGI. Now, I don't expect Weta-level effects from an Eastern European production, but the computer-generated scenes are often shoddy enough to distract the viewer and break the suspension of disbelief. Especially frustrating is the fact that several CG shots could have been done the old-fashioned way, without electronics. My second gripe concerns the subtitles, which no one seems to have proofread. Words are misused and misspelled and too often the syntax tends towards the inscrutable.

I Served the King of England is hardly a masterpiece, and it loses something in translation. Yet it has something to say about history and humanity, and it never loses its message in its persistent levity. I'm glad I saw the film; it's well-made, refreshing, funny, and surprising. What it may not be is enduring.

An Italian Hell

Before I properly start my review of Gomorrah, a very fine 2008 film from Italy, I must offer a bit of context for my praise: Whenever a gritty and decently-made gangster film or TV series appears, critics tend to praise it for its realism and/or its departure from The Godfather. The Sopranos is more realistic than Goodfellas is more realistic than dePalma's Scarface, etc. It's an old reviewing trope, and one I'm not able to dispense with here. Gomorrah is the most realistic crime film that I have ever seen. Rarely have I been so shocked, moved, impressed, and convinced by a film.

Unlike most films about the mafia, Gomorrah's source material is nonfiction, specifically Roberto Saviano's 2006 book. One tends to trust Saviano's take on the criminal group the Camorra, as the author has been the target of more than one attempted hit since his book's publication; one doesn't want to believe the horrors that Saviano recounts, yet the Camorra have rather compelled our belief.

Gomorrah the film is not a direct adaptation of Gomorrah the book. Rather director Matteo Garrone draws inspiration from the book to present a whole series of stories of the Camorra. The movie's several stories intercut without intertwining; the only constant is the baneful presence of the mob. Not only does Gomorrah fail to provide contrived linkages between characters, it fails to give us a villain. The corrupt Naples shown in Gomorrah lacks a Don Coreleone or Al Capone; even the up-market suit-wearing mobsters seem to take orders from above. Evil is all over.

The opening shot of Gomorrah is a closeup of a middle-aged man in a vertical tanning bed. It took me a few moments to place the blue tanning lights; the salon looks almost unreal. Throughout the film, this sense of unreality somehow coexists with a knowledge that we are watching a sadly plausible depiction of Neapolitan life. The murders, corruption, horror, and cruelty of Gomorrah are far more distressing and disorienting than their more traditionally cinematic counterparts.

Five stories run throughout Gomorrah. The first, and most heartbreaking, is the tale of Toto (Salvatore Abruzzese), a very young boy who wants to be in a gang. Try as his mother might, Toto will not be drawn from his dream; we get to witness his awful corruption. The second story shows us two foolish teenagers who also want to be mobsters; they steal weapons and drugs from the Camorra and don't quite understand how deadly their heroes and foes are. From their first appearance, we know Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) are doomed. One only wonders how unpleasant their inevitable deaths will be. A meek Camorra banker stars in the third and most open-ended story. The fourth story concerns a tailor with ruthless mob connections. The final tale shows us high-level mafia business and a functionary who, God help him, develops a conscience.

Just about all the performers in Gomorrah impressed me, but I was especially taken with the younger actors, upon whom the film relies so much. Abruzzese's Toto breaks our heart but not our suspension of disbelief. Petrone and Macor, as the teenage thugs, make their boastful and foolish characters remarkably sympathetic; their gleeful target shooting spree, their strip club visit, and their terrified meetings with mob enforcers all ring true. The world-weary protagonists of the other stories are fantastic, yet the heart of the film is with the doomed youth.

Whereas most crime films set their various lawbreakers against a glamorous-if-gritty urban backdrop, most of Gomorrah takes place in the bleak and rusty tenements that provide the Camorra with its true power base. When the film moves outside the tenements, it's rarely pleasant: An abandoned quarry may be starkly beautiful, but it's also an ideal dump for toxic waste. There's a very short Venetian sequence; I was almost shocked to remember how beautiful Italy can be.

The opening sequence in the tanning salon ends in a quadruple murder; after that first salvo, we don't see another murder for ninety minutes or so. Gomorrah doesn't shy away from violence, but its great accomplishment lies in its depiction of a sick culture. The scenes of a twelve-year-old selling cocaine are far harder to watch than the occasional gunfights. Gomorrah has more than its share corpses, but it possesses an even greater amount of dead souls.

Gomorrah is a great film about radical evil. Like the last movie I reviewed, it's worthy of its shiny Criterion release. Again like that film, it deserves far more attention than it has received. Watch it and weep.

A Minor Masterpiece from Austria

After my last review, of a mediocre action film, I wrote that I would need an art film to serve as a palette cleanser of sorts. I don't know that the 2008 Austrian production Revanche qualifies as "arthouse" – it seems insufficiently pretentious to me – but it's a fine film, and worthy of its 2009 Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film.

For its first forty minutes, Revanche doesn't feel like a single movie at all; instead it seems like two separate films. Movie One tells the story of Alex (Johannes Krisch), a former convict turned handyman of a Viennese brothel. Unbeknownst to corpulent and rich pimp Konecny (Hanno Poschl), Alex and the beautiful Ukrainian prostitute Tamara (Irina Potapenko) are lovers. Circumstances drive Alex to rob a bank; here Movie One intersects with Movie Two, the quiet story of policeman Robert (Andreas Lust), his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss), and their peaceful rural existence. At this point, the film changes its focus yet again; the movie abandons the city for the country, previously minor characters come to the forefront of the action, and once-important figures vanish into the past.

Given that the movie's title is a synonym for "revenge", one expects Revanche's plot to follow a rather typical trajectory, a course ending in bullets, blood, forgiveness, and sorrowfully rousing music. To its eternal credit, Revanche does not take this path of least resistance; despite its suspense and its occasional violence, the film is at heart a quiet and unconventional character study. What begins as a bleak neo-noir quite naturally transforms into a modern pastoral. What some viewers might label an anticlimax seems to me the natural and right conclusion.

Revanche has beautifully simple cinematography. There are many wide and almost static shots of the Austrian countryside and the beauty of nature and painful close-ups of loss and desolation. The violence is discreet, not grotesque, while the motionless and somewhat distant camera renders the sex more curious than erotic. Director Gotz Spielmann doesn't hesitate to show flesh, but his interest is in people, not their bodies.

The acting in Revanche is uniformly fantastic. Krisch is great as the gruff yet "soft" Alex, criminal, lover, and perhaps avenger. Even at his most foolish or disturbing, he's a compelling and sympathetic character. When he robs his bank and ruins his life, the gun he carries is unloaded. Another standout performer is Ursula Strauss, who does an extremely good job "selling" some of Susanne's frankly implausible actions. Though the script lets her down at times, Strauss remains mostly believable. Given what her character eventually does, this is high praise indeed. Finally, I wish Andreas Lust had had more screen-time as Robert. He disappears for much of the film's second half; I would have liked to have seen more of his guilt and anger.

Alas, Revanche does have its flaws. Most troubling is the aforementioned lapse in Susanne's characterization. Her ill-conceived actions serve the plot very well, but they do a grave disservice to her previously-established personality. That Revanche manages to recover its audience testifies to its otherwise sterling quality; similar writing mishaps would destroy a lesser film. Though most of Revanche is enthralling, the film's pacing is far from perfect; we spend altogether too much time watching Alex splitting wood on his grandfather's farm.

It seems to me that the Johannes Krisch's Alex is the highlight of the film. He's occasionally brutal, often desperate, and dangerously obsessed, yet Krisch allows us to see that his character is, at heart, a good man. Early in the film, Alex's ailing grandfather Hausner (Johannes Thanheiser) says that men who go to "the city" end up "either arrogant or a scoundrel." Alex, he concludes, is a scoundrel. At the time, we accept his harsh judgment. As the film progresses, however, both Hausner and the audience come to realize their error. The script sets up a number of parallels between the criminal Alex and the cop Robert; for once the comparisons are neither specious nor relativistic. And though the film establishes the affinities between the two men, no character ever appears to lecture us on the irony of their similarity. Yes, this film respects its viewers.

Though it's a trifle too long and sometimes painfully inconsistent, I nonetheless highly recommend Revanche. It's unconventional, suspenseful, surprising, and most of all moving. The film received very few theater showings in this country; I hope its recent Criterion release will help it find a larger audience.

Something Nasty in the Canal?

I like to think I'm fairly knowledgeable about cinematic matters, but I have to admit that I know absolutely nothing about Argentinean film. As such, I had very few real expectations going into Lucrecia Martel's 2008 film The Headless Woman, which showed in a few American theaters late last year. I admired the film more than I liked it; it's clever and difficult without being especially interesting.

The Headless Woman doesn't tell a story so much as suggest it. Forty-something dentist Vero (Maria Onetto) attempts to answer her cell phone while driving. She leans over her purse, takes her eyes off the road, and hits something or somethings. Certainly she kills a dog, but she has a suspicion she may have done something far worse. The road is dusty and empty and sits by an empty canal. There were no witnesses and nothing in the canal would be seen by a casual observer. Vero drives away from her accident; she sees the dead dog in her mirror, but doesn't investigate further. Soon after Vero's accident there's a great rainstorm and the canal fills up. Soon enough, firemen are dredging to remove a mysterious blockage in one of the canal's drains...

A short synopsis like the above makes The Headless Woman sound like a fairly conventional thriller. It's not. The movie is in fact a very slow-moving and generally un-suspenseful character study of Vero and her life. We meet her extended family (ailing aunt, busy sister, daughters and nieces), her coworkers, her husband, her lover. At times these characters seem to blend together; they're never clearly introduced to us, and the cinematography often obscures our understanding. Especially in the film's early parts, many shots are so dark as to be cryptic. We see people through tinted glass or rain-streaked windows; people that are not Vero have a disconcerting tendency to be out-of-focus. Most of the conversations we hear are banal; dialogue often takes place off-camera as the camera lingers on Vero's face. It's disconcerting and often frustrating, though undeniably well-done. The Netflix description of the film suggests that Vero can no longer distinguish between her various friends and acquaintances. The film never says this outright, but the explanation makes a good deal of sense.

There are indeed many things that The Headless Woman never says. Plot twists are hinted at, but remain just out-of-sight. We never see a corpse, nor can we know for sure that Vero was responsible for one. Two fascinating clues to the story appear at the end, but neither leads to a dramatic onscreen revelation. And even if Vero did kill someone, it wasn't a woman, so the title remains ambiguous. I assume it refers to Vero and her lack of moral (and perhaps) mental sense, though it may also allude to a 1940's Argentinean shocker of the same name. And of course there are several shots, including one right before the film's title appears, where Vero's on camera but her head is out of the frame.

This is a film full of mysteries. There's that car accident, of course, but also a whole bevy of little enigmas. What, exactly, was originally built on the site of Vero's garden? And how did that one relative die? Still, for all its puzzles, The Headless Woman is sometimes too quiet for its own good. Its commentary on modern society is not always especially enthralling.

At times it seems as if half of The Headless Woman's running time consists of close-ups on Vero's silently anguished face. Maria Onetto does a wonderful job portraying Vero; her eyes and the lines on her face coney what her generally-uninteresting dialogue does not. Vero is sad, stoic, and somewhat acerbic; the film suggests she was little different before the accident. Very few of the people around Vero could guess she has undergone a life-changing, epochal event. Only the audience, after all, witnesses the accident. As we see several times throughout the film, Vero's friends and family are more likely to comment on her changed hair color than on her changed life.

I imagine a second viewing of The Headless Woman would make a number of details about the film clearer; for one thing, I'd know which little things to watch for. Other things, I suppose, have no explanation. The Headless Woman is not a bad film, though it feels longer than its eighty-seven minutes. I'd like to see more from Martel, but The Headless Woman didn't impress me as much as I hoped it would.

Radical Evil (Evil Perpetrated by Radicals)

I missed the short theatrical run of The Baader Meinhof Complex. For some reason, I couldn't convince any of my friends to come and watch a two-and-a-half-hour foreign film about an obscure (in this country) German terrorist organization. It's a shame I wasn't able to shanghai anyone into watching it with me, because The Baader Meinhof Complex is one of the best films I've seen all year.

The two most famous members of the left-wing terrorist Baader Meinhof group were, unsurprisingly, Baader and Meinhof. The film portrays journalist-turned-criminal Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) as an idealist who ends up selling her soul to advance her dubious cause. She reaches an epiphany of sorts during her trial and imprisonment, but it comes far too late for it to do anyone any good – she's already thrown away her life and freedom, demolished her family, and participated in a number of murders. Andreas Baader and his girlfriend Gudrun (Johanna Wokalek) call her an intellectual "jerk off", not realizing that writing angry screeds and newspaper columns is a far better occupation than actually murdering the bourgeoisie.

Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) comes across as a sociopath, the bastard child of Che Guevara and the Joker. For Meinhof, the bombings and shootings are the means to the end of revolution. Baader, one senses, believes in revolution because it will let him destroy things. In one memorable scene, he drives along the autobahn at night, firing pistol shots at random into the darkness around him. He's a faux intellectual and a genuine monster.

As with so many other foreign films, it's hard for an American to watch The Baader Meinhof Complex in the way it was intended. The true story of the Baader Meinhof group, which called itself the RAF, is doubtless quite familiar in Germany. A reasonably informed German audience already knows how everything turns out and what to look for in the film. American audiences, on the other hand, will find the film both more suspenseful and more frustrating than it's supposed to be. In one scene, for example, we see a girl, a bystander to a shootout, calmly take a number of photographs. Did these photos become iconic? Doubtless we are supposed to know. More importantly, the film ends without telling us what happens to a number of major characters. The film even dispenses with the traditional "What Happened to X?" captions that follow most docudramas. We have to do a little research to find, for example, that one of the group's major supporters eventually became one of the most notorious of Holocaust deniers. The movie suggests that if you go far enough left, you eventually find yourself on the far right. "Fascist" is one of the most common words in the movie's script, as it is the preferred insult of the Baader Meinhofs. The great irony of the film, of course, is that the Baader Meinhof group was far more fascistic than the West German state it denounced. The socialist / communist student summit at the beginning of the film looks like a Red version of the 1934 Nuremberg rally, though the irony is lost on all of its attendees.

Life is messy, so dramatic filmmakers tend to combine many real people into one fictional one. Uli Edel, director of The Baader Meinhof Complex, however, wanted to create a truly realistic version of the Baader Meinhof group's crimes. As a result, there's an extremely large cast of characters, some of whom appear at the beginning of the film and then vanish until the last half-hour or so. It's hard to keep track of everyone, especially since so many characters spend large portions of the movie in disguise. The film as a whole isn't difficult to follow, but a few parts of it are rather confusing.

Months before I saw the film, I'd read criticism stating that the movie was far too sympathetic to the terrorists it portrays. I'm afraid I must disagree. It's true that many of the bombers, shooters, and assassins in the movie are telegenic, charming, attractive, and brave. And yes, there is quite a lot of attractive terrorist nudity. And it's true that Edel portrays some members the West German government behaving in reprehensible fashion – police brutality, neglect of prisoners, etc. The Baader Meinhof members are not cartoons; they're real human beings, and this makes their various crimes appear all the worse. They abandon their children, conspire against each other, murder civilians, soldiers, and police officers, and then have the gall to call the people who fight them fascists. Edel is a merciless inquisitor. Some of the prison scenes in The Baader Meinhof Complex that reminded me of Hunger, the 2008 film about IRA members on hunger strike in the early nineteen-eighties. Because that film's characters suffered, they were portrayed as noble, whatever violence and evil they may have committed outside the prison. The Baader Meinhof Complex, on the other hand, never lets us forget the crimes that the Baader Meinhof gang committed.

Though the movie doesn't drag, it's hard to believe that The Baader Meinhof Complex is "only" two-and-a-half hours long. It covers ten years, dozens of characters, three continents, and half a dozen countries. It's an epic, and one that remains enthralling all the way through to its bleak and inevitable ending. Morally serious, suspenseful, realistic, and expertly acted and shot, The Baader Meinhof Complex is one of the very best movies I have seen this year.

Revenge: A Dish Served Cold and Well-Garnished

I take a somewhat guilty pleasure in revenge stories. I imagine the moviegoing public shares my fascination, else there would be far fewer filmed vendettas. The simplest revenge movies offer the audience opportunities for guilt-free sadism. At other times, the genre can be intellectual, ironic, and even funny. Today's movie is an odd beast – a marriage between a revenge film and an art film. I am happy to report that it does both genres justice.

The Korean director Chan-wook Park is most famous for his 2003 film Oldboy, which may or may not receive an American remake. Oldboy is in fact the second film in Park's "Vengeance Trilogy". Though the three films share themes, each has a unique plot and characters and can stand alone. I decided to watch Lady Vengeance (called Sympathy for Lady Vengeance in some markets), the final film in the trilogy and a critical favorite.

Lady Vengeance's basic premise is simple, but the film tells its story in a highly unconventional way. Words appear from the clouds; our viewpoint suddenly turns upside-down; a character's face shines with intentionally comic CGI light; people in pictures come to life; dreams blend into reality and past merges with present. The camerawork is surreal, funny, and somehow easy to follow. All too often, such elaborate cinematography goes hand-in-hand with poor storytelling. In Lady Vengeance, however,the film's mode harmonizes with the plot's motion.

The success of the classical revenge story depends on establishing a visceral connection with its audience. For Park, however, thrills are subsidiary to thought. His elaborate staging and cold classical soundtrack distance us from the action without distracting us; we are given room to ponder, analyze, and perhaps judge the characters and their actions. The film's aesthetic framework keeps us from ever fully identifying with anyone in it. I understand that there are in fact two versions of Lady Vengeance; the less popular of the two is even more artistically daring than the "normal" cut. The second version of the film begins in color, but eventually fades to black and white. I would have liked to have seen this take on the film, as several scenes – particularly the last - seem written for the purposes of this device.

Once again, I've managed to write several paragraphs on a film without once describing its plot. Lady Vengeance's eponym is Geum-ja Lee, a thirty-two year old woman recently from thirteen years' imprisonment for her murder of a five-year-old boy. Though Geum-ja confessed to the crime, she was in fact (mostly) innocent. In prison, Geum-ja spent much of her time formulating a plan for her vengeance against the true killer. Like so much else in this film, Geum-ja's wrath takes on a thoroughly unconventional form...

Young-ae Lee plays Geum-ja; her cool beauty and suppressed emotions carry the film. She's quiet, sad, and painfully aware of her sins. She's clearly a sort of monster, but she's nonetheless sympathetic. We don't expect her to take any lasting pleasure from her retribution, but we understand why she could never give it up. The other actors in the film are fine, but the movie would have failed without such a successful lead.

As much as I enjoyed and appreciated Lady Vengeance, the film is not without its problems. The movie spends a great deal of its time establishing the characters of Geum-ja's prison friends, yet most of them vanish from the second half of the film. A police detective collaborates in Geum-ja's highly-illegal revenge, but we never learn enough about him to understand why he behaves as he does. And though this is hardly a major failure, one vital character, though supposed to be a native English speaker, does not sound the part at all.

I was highly impressed with Lady Vengeance; whether or not I blog about them, I shall certainly watch the other two films in Park's trilogy. And perhaps Mr. Hollis-Lima would like to watch his vampire film, Thirst. I have no doubt it would wash the Twilight aftertaste right out of his mouth. Lady Vengeance is a fine fine film.