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.” (Click Here To Read More…)