The Villainess (2017) — Jung Byung-gil
The villainess is one more Korean female character trapped within revenge, love and explosive surprises.
As already mentioned in a previous post about the film “Confession of Murder”, this is director Jung Byung-gil’s latest fiction picture and, following its famous antecedent, “The Villainess” is also an action thriller that bears the burden of exciting and surprising the spectator beyond its fighting scenes.
It actually begins with one of these fighting scenes, when the main character Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin) barges into a building full of ‘bad guys’, taking down one by one. In these first scenes, the use of the camera from her perspective, following her action as if we were in her shoes, caring the weapon and shooting everyone, like in a video game challenge, is thrilling and fresh. Her agony and hatred is perfectly depicted. Right from the start, we know director Byung-gil was much more daring with this film, trying different techniques in his action scenes and trying to add more elements to his plot. Still, Sook-hee fails and is captured by the police. Later on, she finds herself with a new face, literally, as the South Korean Intelligence Agency performs plastic surgery to change her identity and initiate her new life as a governmental agent. While she is trained by the agency, flashbacks reveal that wasn’t her first training. Since a very young age, she was trained to revenge the death of her father by a man who saved her and who she later married, Lee Joong-sang (Shin Ha-kyun). After finishing her second training, Sook-hee’s granted a life outside the training camp as a theatre actress, another ability taught by the Intelligence Agency. As long as she performs some missions for the agency, she can have a personal life of her own, even falling in love at some point. But, as the journey to revenge always proves to be tortuous and deceiving, the past catches up with her and secrets start being unravelled. Finally, the surprise kicks in.
“The Villainess” is definitely entertaining and thrilling, with its well executed and embellished fighting scenes, or even with the ordinary conflicts of love, friendship, motherhood, daughterhood and others. It seems like Jung Byung-gil wanted to extract as much as possible of the life of a woman seeking revenge, and that’s why at some points it may seem like everything is happening at the same time or too rapidly. But with his inventiveness — even if not an art house film itself — like the neon touch of his coloring, it turns out to be an exciting film all through it. It is a different work from “Confession of Murder”, which had a much more solid and focused plot, told in a more traditional way and caring a much much bigger revelation, while “The Villainess” can be predictable at some points and aimed its attention not to the plot itself but to the character of the villainess, who turns out is not that much of a villainess herself.
Thus, another interesting aspect of the film was how Sook-hee was portrayed as much as a woman as she was as a killing machine, even if through kind of old-fashioned lenses of female traditional roles of father fidelity, marriage and motherhood. Even the frenzy for the female perfect form was touched by the story when plastic surgery was done to her, not only to change her face but to improve it. No wonder the government soldiers, all male with the exception of the other secret trained agents and their leader, always gazed at her beauty. Beauty was an attribute that served greatly the agents at their missions. Nevertheless, a male attempt to female illustration.
