Last Words: Park Chan-wook, SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE

This Friday’s Last Words feature is a last scene, one of my favorite last scenes in film. (This is an understatement; better to say, one of the scenes that crushes me the most, in the places that need to be crushed.) It comes from Park Chan-wook’s SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE. Unfortunately this Youtube video doesn’t have subtitles.

I’ve tried to write an essay about this film. I couldn’t. Too close. Even to write a short descriptive paragraph about it, here, was impossible. I did write an essay-poem about it recently; about it and an equally crushing-of-me film I saw recently, THE HOUSEMAID, by Im Sang-soo.

Here I can only say: I too am a girl who puts her face in the cake meant to redeem her.

Voiceover: “Lee Geum-ja made a great mistake in her youth. And used other people to achieve her own goals. But she still couldn’t find the redemption she so desired. Actually, because of this… I liked Geum-ja.”

(at the end) “Farewell, Geum-ja.”