Last Updated on December 1, 2020 by rob
After three years military service Changsoo (Song Jae-ho) returns home and is shocked to discover that Youngja (Yeom Bok-soon) – the woman he wooed before he left – has gone from hard working maid to brassy prostitute. Not only that but somewhere along the way she’s lost one of her arms! Determined to get Youngja out of the squalor she’s in Changsoo pays for urgent medical treatment to cure her of the VD she’s caught and even makes her an artificial arm to replace the one she lost. What happened to her? Can she be saved? Does she even want to be?
An amazing melodrama that’s part sharply observed character study, part bittersweet romance and all vivid local colour. It rocks on every count thanks to a pair of charismatic performances from Yeom Bok-soon as Youngja and Song Jae-ho as Changsoo. This tale of a good girl who falls into prostitution after a run of bad luck means Bok-soon is effectively playing one person with two differing personalities. The first is the no nonsense maid who comes from the country determined to earn money to send back to her family and who won’t tolerate any hanky-panky with Changsoo. The other is the good time gal with a curly wig and one arm who lives for booze and men. It gradually becomes apparent that the latter is a façade Youngja’s built to cope with all the cruelty that fate’s inflicted on her. It’s a hard shell but Changsoo’s persistent kindness to her means the real Youngja keeps on surfacing.
But all this does is cause her so much anguish she resorts to more booze and more men to blot out the pain. It’s a vicious circle and in the film’s second half we come to recognise a kind of psychological conflict being played out in Youngja – her desire for an escape through death vs the possibility of a new life – a conflict Bok-soon plays so well it’s incredibly gripping. Kim Ho-sun’s imaginative direction is aces at finding simple but effective visual metaphors for our heroine’s feelings. Youngja watching children at play on a railroad track as the shot goes out of focus touchingly evokes her estrangement from her own family. The steam hissing violently from high pressure pipes in a boiler room as Changsoo’s colleague unwisely tries to tell Youngja that she’s no good for him ominously foreshadows the emotional explosion we fear is inevitable. We’re on tenterhooks wondering if Youngja can be saved from her miserable existence.
As our heroine undergoes treatment to cure her of VD she’s warned by the nurse that she can’t have sex or alcohol. But after returning to her dingy brothel lodgings and overcome with despair, Youngja pours herself alcohol and raises it to her lips… only to have it snatched away by the sudden arrival of Changsoo! The tension in that moment is really something and a testament to just how emotionally involved we’ve gotten with these characters. Just the story of how Youngja turns from a sweet maid into a prostitute is gripping and convincing in itself. Turns out after she’d agreed to wait 3 years for Changsoo to finish his military service she was raped by the eldest son of her employer, dismissed from her job, made homeless and then lost one of her arms in a horrific traffic accident. Bok-soon’s heartfelt performance turns what could have been a caricature of suffering into a figure of believable depth and empathy.
And Song Jae-ho as Changsoo is equally good as the one man who genuinely cares for her. Right from the moment the pair first meet their mutual attraction is so obvious that questioning Changsoo’s subsequent kindness toward this woman seems inconceivable. We really want him to rescue Youngja and for this pair to spend the rest of their lives happily together. Ho-sun’s direction is full of sharp details; the squalid warren of alleyways the prostitutes live in, their tiny single rooms, the sight of them in the alley each morning washing their faces in bowls of water. The film never softens the squalor of Youngja’s life even as it infuses the drama with a kind of earthy humour – such as when our girl flashes a toothy grin at Changsoo as she squats over a toilet bowl, or a nocturnal police raid in which a copper takes a snatch at a fleeing Youngja only to come away with her prosthetic arm.
Far from being a curse on the story the film’s ragged production values evoke a wild, vivid immediacy and one scene in particular, when Youngja’s arm is torn off as she falls from an overloaded bus, is so inventive in its execution – simply a bloodless severed limb spinning up into the sky in defiance of gravity – that the moment feels as disorientating for the viewer as it no doubt did for poor Youngja. A rape scene in which Youngja is attacked by her employer’s son draws its power from the way her terrified reactions are insistently contradicted by the porno music soundtrack and softcore coupling. It’s the kind of lurid, uncomfortable and yet oddly intimate moment you only ever seem to find in low budget fare. Oftentimes that combination just seems naff but here – perhaps because we already care about Youngja and are touched by her pitiful declaration to the son that having had her it’s now this bastard’s responsibility to look after her – it works really well.
Yet for all her suffering Youngja shows herself to be one of life’s great survivors. As a defiant reminder she keeps a bust of the Venus de Milo in her room and waving it in front of one reluctant customer put off by her missing limb she hilariously declares, “Do you want sex or an arm?” Youngja puts up a brassy front but we can tell how moved she is by the tenderness Changsoo shows toward her even when the shame she feels at what she’s become means she can’t bring herself to give him what he wants. This is brought home in a pivotal sequence in which, sheltering in a train station, Youngja is approached by a madam offering her work. It’s at this moment both Youngja and the viewer realise she either makes a clean break or she’ll be dead. There’s no other option.
I think that realisation is why the film’s coda – set a few years later as Changsoo tracks Youngja down to find her married to a decent guy and with a baby in tow – keeps us onside with her. Of course we’re disappointed that she and Changsoo couldn’t make a go of it but we understand why she had to do it. So even if this bittersweet turn of events isn’t the ending we might want it is one reached entirely on Youngja’s terms. She suffers appallingly but in the end she’s no victim. She saves herself and in a strange sort of way she saves Changsoo too, whose obsession with her threatens to overwhelm his life. I thought this was an absolute blast of a film – by turns sweet and funny, shocking and lurid, romantic and touching and so well played – not just one of the great South Korean movies of the 1970’s but one of the great South Korean movies full stop.
