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Plot and story summary:
Our movie focuses around our 15-year old heroine, Hye-Su Oh, who is working as a child prostitute in the impoverished section of Seoul’s Itaewon District. Here we see a collection of Korean business men amongst a population of American soldiers creating an eclectic atmosphere of Korean corrupt rich and equally corrupt American presence.
Hye-Su Oh clearly has a purpose. Along with the John we see her kill in the opening credits, she kills a second John, a masochist, by binding him to a hotel bed and piercing him with fishhooks (at least 50), all of them attached to a strand of fishing line. She grasps all of the fishing lines together and tugs them, asking him the same question, Where is Dae-Jung Lee? And when he doesn’t answer, she forcefully pulls thme out of his chest as he screams. She gags him and leaves him bound to the bed.
Amidst her bloody trail of murders, we learn slowly of Hye-Su Oh’s back story through staggered flashbacks and voice-overs:
It’s her sixth Birthday party. There are banners and streamers and she is celebrating with her mother, father, and little brother (about 3-years-old). Suddenly a man and his henchmen (the two Johns we saw Hye-Su Oh kill earlier) break into their house: Dae-Jung Lee, a Seoul mob boss and loan shark has come to collect his money from her father. Upon entry into the house he immediately shoots her mother, who collapses like a ton of bricks. She screams and hides in the closet of her parent’s room with her brother. The henchmen come after her and one of the henchmen grabs her brother and slits his throat. She stands there, petrified, as they torture and humiliate her father, tying him to his own bed, naked and threatening to rape his only daughter. They cut off his fingers and one of his eyes. Finally, Dae-Jung Lee kills him by shooting him in the face.
After the grueling flashback and tales are over, it is revealed that Dae-Jung Lee had sold the 6-year-old Hye-Su Oh to the brothel where we find her at present. She explains that for most of her life, she was not cognizant of what had put her there. It wasn’t until she reached puberty that she began to have flashbacks about what happened, though they are only snippets. It was the presence of the two Johns that pushed her over the edge to remember what happened.
We learn that Hye-Su Oh is lonely and has never known the love of a mother or father, or the bonding between siblings. She longs for that familial bond.
She then states her mission statement: She is tracking down Dae-Jung Lee and plans on killing him and destroying his family, just as he had done hers, on her 16th Birthday, which is in a month.
Realizing that her Birthday is in a month, the movie begins to adapt a “countdown” metaphor (i.e., scene cuts to black displaying: 30 days remaining).
Finding that two of his best clients are dead, Jung-Hwa Kim, her pimp and owner of the brothel, confronts her and beats her mercilessly, her face bloody and swollen. This is a long and drawn-out fight scene. Jung-Hwa Kim throws her into his mirror and she is cut by the shards of glass. In a final standoff, he attempts to rape her but she bites his penis off, knocking him off balance and then sinks her teeth into his neck, tearing into his jugular. Hye-Su Oh then tears through Jung-Hwa Kim’s possessions and finds an address book with an entry for Dae-Jung Lee.
Now knowing where Dae-Jung Lee lives, Hye-Su Oh purchases a maid uniform and visits his home, offering her house-keeping services for a job. She ties her hair back neatly and calls herself Soon-Bok Ham.
To her surprise, Dae-Jung Lee is not the tyrant she pictured him to be; he is older, pudgier, and has three sons: One 9-year-old and two 5-year-olds, both twins. He hires her to the position, stating that his work requires him to do a lot of traveling and with his wife in the final stages of her third pregnancy, he needs help around the house.
Over the next couple of weeks, Hye-Su Oh rarely sees Dae-Jung Lee’s wife, only in passing, and begins to bond with the three boys. Here, Chan-Wook Park will strike up an odd tone of aloofness between the two women, the wife passing as a beautiful ghost occasionally from room to room, but never seen with her husband or sons.
Hye-Su Oh serves as maid and surrogate mother, bathing them, playing with them, and tucking them into bed at night. Even Dae-Jung Lee, though flitting in and out of the scenes seems nothing but tender and loving to his sons.
But then her 16th Birthday approaches. Dae-Jung Lee goes on a business trip and she is left to take care of his three boys. On the evening of her 16th Birthday, Hye-Su Oh is giving the twins their nightly bath and she is caught between the fresh bond that she feels for them and the vengeance that she has been building up for the past 10 years. In a sudden flashback and fit, she pushes both of their heads beneath the water and drowns them as they struggle. She is weeping by the time is done and then turns to the bathroom doorway, where she sees the 9-year-old standing there. He immediately turns to run to his room and climbs onto his bed where she winds up strangling him to death while weeping. Hye-Su Oh is caught within herself, crying in the dark of his bedroom until the silence is broken by the voice of the Wife, calling her sons’ names.
Hye-Su Oh straightens out abruptly and grabs an arrow from the quiver of the 9-year-old’s archery set and heads toward the wife’s bedroom. She opens the door and the wife is standing there, back to her. She comes up behind her, arm poised with the arrow when the wife turns suddenly and the two women’s eyes lock.
“Hye-Su Oh?”
…
“Mamma?”
We take a moment to take in the shock while Hye-Su Oh realizes that she has just slaughtered her only living siblings.
Hye-Su Oh’s mother reveals that after that night, she was revived by Dae-Jung Lee. He kept her alive and told her that he would keep her daughter safe if she agreed to be his wife and bear him a family. In those 10 years, Hye-Su Oh’s mother endured his abuse and his advances – his children – being his kept woman - with the sole dream of seeing her baby daughter again.
Now united, Hye-Su Oh asks her mother what they should do about Dae-Jung Lee, knowing that he should be returning from his business trip the following evening. Hye-Su Oh’s mother says that she has been waiting 10 years teach to her daughter what all mothers pass down to their baby girls: How to cook. She decides that they would cook for Dae-Jung Lee together.
The next day they spend the entire day making dumplings: Rolling the dough and filling it with meat. We see a stark contrast from the violence of the movie to the tender bonding moment of mother and daughter over cooking.
When Dae-Jung Lee arrives home, Hye-Su Oh serves him his meal on a silver platter. He sits alone in their grandiose dining room and we close-up on his gluttony as he slurps and eats the dumplings. Once he’s done, Hye-Su Oh reveals her true identity and tells him that she has slaughtered his sons. Dae-Jung Lee retorts by telling her they were her brothers, and that she is a brother-killer and no better than he is.
And then she reveals what she put in the dumplings.
Out of the shock and horror of eating his own children, Dae-Jung Lee crumples to the floor as Hye-Su Oh’s mother emerges and stands beside her. The two women stare down at the man, who is gagging in the grand dining room, lamenting, and holding his chest. Finally, he pulls out his gun and shoots himself in the head.
Fade out.
Our final scene is an idyllic scene of Hye-Su Oh and her mother in a farm in the countryside. Her mother is no longer pregnant and with them is a baby girl. The three women stand strong as the movie fads to black. Roll credits.
(cont.)
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