Film Club Review – Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Well…. what do I say? I must confess that this started off very confusingly for me. I felt thrown in to a situation where I wasn’t given any opportunity to connect with the characters in this film, and as a result I felt like I was simply being tugged through the rest of the time. Now, apparently this is the third in a trilogy? That might have had something to do with why I felt so lost, but even so, sequels should still be able to stand alone in some sense or another.

So anyways, what is this film about? Its about a woman who is released from jail and takes revenge on those who were responsible for putting her there. Fair enough. And along the way we gt glimpses into what her cellmates in prison were like, though all this build up of who they are and how they relate to our main character eventually goes nowhere. We also learn she has a daughter at some point, but this storyline ends up holding no weight either.

Director Chan-wook Park tries a few different stylistic devises and cuts, some of which work but most of which don’t, at least not for me. At times it feels like he’s impersonating Tarantino’s non-linear timeline juggling, and the fact that this plot is very reminiscent of Kill Bill only serves to remind us of this.

And so I went from confusion to a moment where things started to piece together as we learned more about the incident which put her in jail. As hints of some tightly woven revenge plot began to wind their way through, my interest began to pique. But as the movie continued, I realized there really was no intricate plan so I began to get bored. And then near the end the film suddenly takes a very morbid turn which really turned me off.
Sorry, this one just didn’t work for me.
3/10