On October 2nd, at a special screening of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (친절한 금자씨) at the New York Film Festival (you can read an in-depth review of the film here), Park Chan Wook participated in a Q&A session with the help of a translator. I copied it all down as fast as I could write, but understand this is a rough transcript, and also note that if you haven’t seen the film, be warned there are SPOILERS in this Q&A:

Introduction: After noting that Sympathy for Lady Vengeance was the 3rd film in a trilogy on vengeance (with Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), Park Chan Wook said: “Whenever I start off a new film, the first thing I think is how to be different from what I’ve just done. After JSA, I wanted to do something very cold.”

“Oldboy was visually abundant, more warm than Mr. Vengeance. Lady Vengeance is different from all of my previous films because it has a woman as the protagonist.”

Question: “When did you find an actress for the role and did you bring her into script-writing as well?”

Park Chan Wook: “[Yeong Ae] Lee was also in JSA. In that film, I regretted that I didn’t have the chance to delve into her possibilities [as an actress]. She wanted to do something more provocative.”

Park Chan Wook said that after bringing her on board for Lady Vengeance “She read each script as it came out, and would discuss things she didn’t understand.”

Question: “Were the references to broken glasses in Lady Vengeance a reference to Battleship Potemkin?”

Park Chan Wook: “No. There’s only one homage in the film — when she’s taking the teacher to school. They turn left, and in the car the people in the car sway around, similar to Hitchcock’s The Birds, when birds swing in the background.”

Question: “There is a recurring image of eating flesh in your films, could you discuss it?”

Park Chan Wook: “Is [a scene of eating flesh] in Lady Vengeance?”

Audience member who asked question reminded Park Chan Wook of a scene towards the beginning of Lady Vengeance, when they’re introducing Geum Ja’s new prison cell-mates, and one of them is introduced as having eaten her lover after killing him with an accompanying visual. This prompted a big “Oh yes!” from Park Chan Wook, who remarked that the question doesn’t necessarily refer to human flesh. “When it comes to portraying violence, it’s good not to make magical,” he answered, but added that nobody had ever asked him that question before and that he’d have to think about it.

Question: Are there any South Korean directors who have influenced your work?

Park Chan Wook: “Kim-Ki Young’s “The Maid” [presumably 1960’s Hanyo], and that director’s other works have greatly shocked me. He’s very pessimistic, very cold, very surreal. He has a knack of combining violence with humor.”

Question: “What brought you, Mr. Park, to the subject of revenge in the first place?”

Park Chan Wook: “If you look at revenge as portrayed in the movies, they follow a pattern. Something happens that will incur a great amount of rage. You die and are reborn in a process of getting revenge. But at the moment you exact revenge, at that moment you die, you become empty because everything you live for ends. It’s a good metaphor for life.”

Question: How do you create high emotional realism in a setting that is very surreal?

Park Chan Wook: “Great actors and great acting. They’ve never experienced these experiences, so I tell them to be very confident of how they portray their characters. I tell them, nobody in the audience has experienced this either, so the way you’re experiencing it is right for the audience.”

Question: “Why include the scene at the end with the boy?” [Referring to the scene towards the end of the film that features a boy who played a large role in Geum Ja’s going to prison — he comes up repeatedly at the beginning of the film but then reappears towards the end of the film in an interesting scene].

Park Chan Wook: “I have a feeling the audience might have forgotten about it, so I wanted to remind them. In all the actions, she was an accomplice to the scam that led to his death. She thought she’d get forgiveness, but it didn’t work out. The ghost of the boy has grown into a man in the time since his death, but Geum Ja hasn’t grown since then. The ghost’s expression is of disappointment, asking ‘why did you do this?’ ”

Question: “Earlier films like JSA had a lot of computer graphics, seems like you’ve moved away from that here, why?”

Park Chan Wook: [Noting that his films feature more computer graphics than might be obvious, he continued] “OldBoy had a lot of graphics that are not so obvious, for example in the hallway fight all the knives are drawn in. There are also a lot of computer graphics effects in this film — obviously in the scene [dream sequence early in film] where there is a human head on a dog. I have no qualms with using computer graphics, it’s just another tool, like a camera.”

Question: “Could you talk about the scene where the teacher is translating to the daughter, but you don’t see him? Did you also shoot it where you could see him?” [This refers to the scene in Lady Vengeance where, for the first time, Geum Ja is able to speak with her english-speaking-only daughter by forcing the now tied-up teacher to translate what would otherwise be a very emotional, break-through moment between the mother and her estranged daughter]

Park Chan Wook: “My storyboards are very specific and complete, we stick close to them [while shooting]. That scene is the first time they’re talking, and I thought it might be too sentimental. I thought this would be a chance to add humor by showing the contrast. It allows you to make it more jeering.”

Question: “When you start on a project, do you have a pretty clear vision of the entire project down to costumes etc. or does that get developed through working with collaborators?”

Park Chan Wook: “Some things are decided in the script, some later. Because I write my own stories, so many things are already decided. For example, when [in Lady Vengeance] the parents are killing [the teacher], Geum Ja’s got a cover over her face, up to her eyes to emphasize that she’s only an observer — that was decided in the script.”

Question: The next question was asked in Korean, but I gathered it was a two part question asking what PCW’s next project was, and for that project, how much collaboration with the cinematographer, noting that in his past films despite different set designers, the look is much the same.

Park Chan Wook: “If you were to visit me on set, you might think I’m controlling everything but it’s not so. Storyboards are heavily detailed, and done with the cinematographer where we basically live together, so we’re basically just following our plan, although on set there are always minor adjustments. Actually, when I first envisioned Lady Vengeance, it had a very different look, a more natural look, but over time I guess my style or artistic preference must lean against it, because at time of shooting I said forget it.”