All Bout My Fav DJGs

Translator's note: Major spoilers are masked out. Drag your mouse over them to read.

After 13 years of acting career, Lee Young-Ae is reborn as an actress as 'the kind Ms. Geum-Ja'

In 'Sympathy for Lady Vengeance', 'Ms. Geum-Ja' Lee Young-Ae emits a halo, illuminating the prison at night. The light shines over the bars of the narrow cell, reaching outside the prison. The scene parodies not only stained glass paintings of a medieval church, but also Lee Young-Ae's goddess-like image in her TV commercials. The director's intention, however, must have been to symbolize the halo of Lee Young-Ae's talent as a 13-year veteran actress, rather than as a TV commercial model. A hidden message of the scene was perhaps that Lee Young-Ae's potential as an actress shines beyond the public's prejudice that has confined her to a fixed image.

Her goddess-like elegance, her fair skin that leads us to wonder if she indeed lives on oxygen, and her long trailing skirt quite often prevents us from seeing the actress Lee Young-Ae behind it. But in 'Sympathy for Lady Venegance', she once again succeeds at a dramatic display of her unexpectedness that she had shown us through the barmaid Ae-Sook of Noh Hee-Gyeong's 'The Reason I Live', Jang-Geum of 'Daejanggeum', or Eun-Soo in Hur Jin-Ho's 'One Fine Spring Day'.

Such unexpectedness comes from irony. It was manifest through her quick motion in 'One Fine Spring Day' when she blocks Yoo Ji-Tae's spoon with her own as he tries to help her with her huge bowl of rice, and her playful smile in 'Daejanggeum' as she manages to get out of the farm in Cheju pretending that she caught chicken pox. SPOILER begin In 'Sympathy for Lady Vengeance', Lee Young-Ae turns into a high school girl who makes a phone call to Mr. Baek, not knowing what to do about her accidental pregnancy. SPOILER end When she, once the shy and perplexed girl rubbing her calf with her other foot with the phone receiver in her hand, resolutely strides ahead in a leather coat holding a gun 10 years later, it brings us a refreshing surprise and shock. Park Chan-Wook has successfully awakened the compound quality of an actress hidden behind her beauty.

One could say that 'Inshallah', 'Joint Security Area', and 'Last Present' did no more than reproducing the intellectual and elegant quality of an already intellectual and elegant actress. But 'One Fine Spring Day' and 'Daejanggeum' stirred our curiosity by revealing the human interior of a heavenly goddess. To exaggerate a bit, Lee Young-Ae acquires a deeper and more solid beauty as an actress when her heavenly image is subjected to worldly troubles. Of course, such an irony can only completed when the nobility of the actress is accompanied by her thorough understanding of her own acting and the help of the director.

Perhaps the reason behind the choice of Lee Young-Ae by renowned directors like Hur Jin-Ho and Park Chan-Wook is the duplicity and ambiguity of Lee Young-Ae's such image, and her ability to attract audiences through it. Hur Jin-Ho unearthed Lee Young-Ae's expressive power hidden behind her purity. Lee Young-Ae's natural performances well portrayed both the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of love, as she acts selfishly, hesitates, and struggles. Park Chan-Wook went even further, uncovering the ambiguous and complex quality inside the actress. He experimented with the paradox in which, the more she swears and curses, the more cruel her revenge is, and the more she begs for forgiveness, the more beautiful and elegant she becomes. Park Chan-Wook asks us who else, other than Lee Young-Ae, can a director rely on for an attempt at aestheticizing revenge, which had to be delayed to make it more beautiful, unlike that of Hamlet which was delayed due to his hesitation.

Posted by Miss Cha on Wednesday, August 10, 2005 at 4:52 PM | Permalink