Park Chan-Wook’s New Film Revealed in Latest Interview

Posted by X at 8:11pm.

Posted in Interviews , Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Asia.

Director Park was interviewed by Oh Dong-Jin, a popular name (or at least face) with Korean DVD collectors, and certainly one of the best film critics in Korea. The two had a very long and extremely interesting discussion about Park’s latest film, the reactions to it, and his future projects. Here’s the juiciest spoiler-free parts for you.

Oh Dong-Jin: When did you first start planning 친절한 금자씨 (Sympathy For Lady Vengeance)? What was the first picture that came to mind thinking about the film?
Park Chan-Wook: A fairy tale. In it, Geum-Ja was in prison and this old woman came in. She didn’t obey orders and smelled terribly so nobody paid attention to her...except Geum-Ja, who was very kind to her. 100 days after, a ray of light shone on the old woman’s face, making her look like a spirit. She told Geum-Ja: “I want to give you a prize for your kindness. Tell me three wishes and I’ll make them come true.” So after Geum-Ja is out to seek revenge, and she realizes it’s too hard for her, she slowly uses those three wishes to get by. That kind of fairy tale.

Oh: But so to speak, would you go the Ryu Seung-Wan way and while letting the two help each other move the story in another direction? Or just have the fairy tale develop in her mind?

Park: (Cutting his speech) To tell that story, I got a female writer (Jung Seo-Kyung) and asked her to write it for me. Honestly, back then I was supposed to start working on 박쥐 (Bat, his longtime project of a vampire film), but she told me “Lady” could have been made quickly. So as I realized the vampire film would take much longer, I wanted to shoot something not too long after Oldboy, so the choice went to “Lady.”

Oh:Tony Rayns wrote two things about the images in the film, superficial and surface. So he was not able to feel anything. Why would he write that? This guy…
Park: Maybe he said that because there were no subtitles. He doesn’t understand Korean, does he? That guy…
Oh: Is that a communication problem? I think that’s the case.

Park: Then foreigners can’t do anything about it, since they don’t know what kind of person Lee Young-Ae is. Since they don’t know the image Lee has built over the years, and this is a film that is a lot of fun because of it [ed. Lee’s transformation from her past roles] they might not understand the humour.

Oh: It’s like when Tarantino in Jackie Brown reintroduced Pam Grier to a public that didn’t know about her, so they couldn’t understand the humour?
Park: Exactly.
Oh: So it’s possible this film will do a little worse overseas?
Park: Maybe. I think this is the most local of the three vengeance films.

Oh: What are you going to do now? Rest a little? Or…
Park: Oh, now I have to shoot a HD (High Definition) Film.
Oh: What would that be? Another horror film?
Park: No. it’s a funny and cheerful film. A girl gets hospitalized at a mental istitution. She thinks she’s a robot, a fighting machine, and daydreams about that. Even looking at all the machines in the surroundings, she thinks they’re all like her, so she starts to send messages to a LCD screen, “go there and kill someone.” That kind of kid. There’s obviously lots of patients to meet where she’s at, people from every walk of life. Crazy men and women, but also a little boy she falls in love with, a thieving little boy; someone who thinks he has the ability to steal the soul of other people. Some kind of rude machine using equipment, like an electrode, every night stealing the soul of the sleeping patients.

Via nKino(note for Korean speakers, the interview contains major spoilers)

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