Lady Vengeance is my favorite of the Vengeance Trilogy and an obvious precursor to his first English film, Stoker. The story was not predictable, but was a complex narrative that weaved together different time periods & perspectives. I’m still slightly confused about a couple of plot points and that makes me happy because the film definitely seems to demand a second viewing. It is visually quite lush and vibrant. It combines all the enjoyable elements of the revived classic revenge movie (think Tarantino) without abandoning Park’s thematic concerns of the futility or limits of revenge as a vehicle of restoration. I appreciated the injection of humor and Park’s seemingly first stab (pun intended) at broken people and a broken community learning how to come together & create connections despite inhospitable conditions. I think that Park is more sympathetic to his female characters than his male characters because even when they are bad, they seem less inherently venal and their bad actions seem to serve a purpose (unless he reduces it to a cartoon villainy) whereas even when his male characters are good, they seem to inherently slip into bad actions. I’m not saying that is a good thing, but after seeing the majority of his films, I have concluded that Park seems to belong to the John Irving school of a man tormented by his gender, which makes me feel sad for him.