Lady Vengeance on DVD

Last intallment in Park Chan-wook's Revenge Trilogy Series

Oct 5, 2006 Christine Miguel

World Premiere: July 29. 2005

Country of Production: South Korea

Date of Release: Sept 26, 2006

Distribution: Tartan Video USA & UK

No. of Discs: 1

Language: Korean, English

Subtitles: English, Spanish

The last installment in South Korea's Park Chan-wook's Revenge Trilogy Lady Vengeance, is his finest film of the three. It's a nice ending note after what seemed to be a very macho, testosterone driven, blind rage seeing vengeance anthology. In the case with Lady Vengeance, the plotting of a calculated revenge over a long period of time, in this case 13 years, is a far more satisfying viewing experience. Tartan Video releases the title as part of their Tartan Asia Extreme collection with the other two in the series, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeanceand Oldboy with a nice set of treats in the Special Features section.

There are 3 audio commentaries to choose from:

1 - Audio commentary with Director Park Chan-wook and Lead Actress Lee Young-ae which is very entertaining to listen to as its a nostalgic look back for both of them. Playing against type, Chan-wook specifically casted Young-ae as the cold, calculating Geum Ja seeking to avenge the 13 years of her youth she lost while falsely imprisoned.

2 - Audio commentary with the Director, Cinematographer and Art director is nice on a technical filmmaking level.

3 - Audio commentary by Richard Pena, Program Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center and Associate Professor of Film, Columbia University is a deconstruction of themes, stylistic elements and whatever 'struck Pena's interest' about the film.

The "Making of Lady Vengeance" featurette is a decent behind the scenes look narrated by the AD of how committed Young-ae was to her character and despite the dark undertone of the film, there was always laughter on set.

The 'Interview with Director Park Chan-wook' is slightly ajarring as in lieu of subtitles there is an interpreter. This causes several things to occur: a) you're not really listening to what the director is saying and b) the flow of thoughts gets disrupted, paraphrased and sometimes improperly translated into English due to the immediacy of the translation. Please also see in the Revenge Trilogy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeanceand Oldboy .

There will be a limited 3 disc release of Oldboy also from Tartan coming soon.