🎬 #88 Revenge Is A Dish Best Served, Alive.
It’s the middle of September, which is crazy, so it’s time to hunker down, let Autumn surround us and take a deep dive into some heart-warming revenge thrillers. Wherever your find yourself in the world I hope you are doing well. Enjoy this week’s two films, or one, or none.
Happy choosing, happy viewing
Bry
FILM ONE: PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
2020 Dir Emerald Fennell
[1hr 53 mins]
This is director Emerald Fennell’s feature length debut, having acted in various films and then most notably serving as head writer on the second season of the BBC drama - Killing Eve. Her debut is a revenge drama that’s as funny and dark as it is able to play with our expectations. It does this through some very smart casting - for example, Adam Brody, most people remember him as the super nice, innocent Seth on The OC, and that’s exactly what Fennell is hoping when it comes to the opening scene.
Playing with the audience’s expectation that a particular casting choice brings. This is also helped more broadly by the casting of Mulligan - someone you may expect to be more ‘delicate or friendly’ - judging from her past performances. But here, she goes all in on someone intent on seeking revenge for something we don’t fully comprehend until the end of the second act.
She’s haunted, a person stuck in time, unwilling to move beyond the period that this tragic incident took place in. The art direction of her parent’s house, where she still lives, make it feel like a time period all to itself. The pastels, the choice of wardrobe and innocence of bright blues, plus the ever perfect weather make it seem like an unreal world - a tangental story to Clueless. This just makes the dark moments, the moments of vulnerability and pain all the more striking.
Bo Burnham’s role also has us wishing, fingers crossed, that good things will happen for Cassandra. Indeed the expectations of rom coms and meet cute moments has us totally wrapped up in Fennell’s web. At every turn we are confronted with the opposite of what we thought about someone or something. We expect, then are surprised and surprised once again. This is a fun, dark, twisted revenge thriller that had me laughing out loud during the very first shot - the inversion of what a classic night club opening scene would be if it was directed by a man.
TL;DR Get pulled every which way by Fennell’s revenge thriller, comedy, drama, romance - every bit is as juicy as the next.
*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon, Apple, Google and YouTube in the US and the UK.
Fact: The director was 7 months pregnant when shooting began.
Bonus: Fennell appears briefly as Midge in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
FILM TWO: OLDBOY
2003 Dir Park Chan-wook
[2hrs]
Once you see this film it’s hard to ever get it out of your mind. It does what Korean cinema does best - jumps between slapstick comedy, heart-wrenching revelation and incredibly dark violence all within the space of a few minutes. It has become notorious and lauded for great reason - going places few other films dare.
From the outset were thrown into the mystery - Oh Dae-su, played by a wholly committed Choi Min-sik, is captured for a reason he or we are unaware of. Slowly, the mystery is unravelled. Taking us places we never expected to go, through a maze of startling action sequences and live animal eating. This is a film about as far from bland dumplings as you can get.
Park Chan-wook’s direction keeps us in the mystery alongside the protagonist, weaving together a masterful revenge that feels at times like a platform gamer. This is violent look into the endless repercussions of violence and a deep exploration of the worst possible revenge you could exact on someone - seemingly the answer isn’t death.
TL;DR Chan-wook’s dark, knotty and gnarled revenge thriller is an experience you have to go through to believe, go in knowing as little as possible if you’ve avoided spoilers this far or rewatch and relive it all over again.
*Available to buy on Amazon, Apple, Google and YouTube in the US and rent in the UK.
Fact: Based on the Japanese Manga of the same name.