In an interview with cine21 magazine director Pang Eun-jin refers to her film Princess Aurora as "a melodrama, and a very dark one at that." Unfortunately, too many people have been fixated on comparing it (often unflatteringly) to Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. The two films have very little in common, in fact. Pang's film is a movie about grief, and the actions of the lead character are more representations of that overwhelming grief than they are about getting even. There's none of the emphasis on careful plotting and methodical execution that we get in Lady Vengeance-- just a series of seemingly unconnected crimes. In this sense, the film is more like Hitchcock's Marnie, or Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black than it is like Park's film. Indeed, the sequence in the hospital seems to be a clear reference to Truffaut's film version of the Cornell Woolrich novel. The performances in the film are all first rate, and the single flashback sequence toward the end of the film (the flashback that explains the motivations for the lead character's actions) is both heartbreaking and horrifying. Princess Aurora is a commentary on Korean society (e.g., the position of women in Korean society, Korean society's view of children, etc.), not a simple story of revenge. Where Park's film is a overwhelming and spectacular, Pang's film is quiet and thoughtful--the type of film that will leave viewers capable of appreciating its subtle style thinking for some time. It is an underrated masterpiece.
Review of Princess Aurora
