Pieta

It's a dark and brutal morality tale of guilt and redemption, the movie "PIETA" tells a story of a debt collector Kang-do(Lee Jeong-jin) works as a debt collector for some loan shark, and he is someone you don't want to mess with especially if you happen to borrow the money from his boss. Even if his poor debtors really have no money to pay back, he gets the money back by any ruthless means necessary. These unfortunate debtors usually work at the metal shops located on the narrow alleys of Seoul, so they are forced to get their hands or feet injured by their machines for paying him back through the insurance money they will acquire. During one comic but cringe-inducing moment, one debtor nervously asks him to cut both of his hands instead of only one hand because he needs more money to pay his debts and support his baby to be born.

Kang-do's life is as barren as his debtors'. While his home looks a little more comfortable, he has lived alone in his apartment. He cooks for himself, and he usually brings live animals to his home for his dinner. To represent his beastly nature, he prefers to buy a live chicken and then butcher it instead of just purchasing a dead one. On one day, his life is disrupted by the sudden appearance of one mysterious woman(Cho Min-soo), who claims to be his mother and apologizes to him for abandoning him not so long after he was born. Resentful toward his mother he does not remember, he does not believe any of her words and brusquely rejects her, but she keeps coming to him. She slowly insinuates herself into his daily life while behaving like a mother who tries to compensate for her unforgivable fault in the past. Though he harshly treats her, she sticks to him while doing what mothers usually do for their dear sons. She cooks for him, and she says genially to this detestable man who has probably never experienced love or kindness for a long time.

There is quite a disturbing scene where Kang-do cruelly attempts to violate her with his own twisted logic, and you may wonder how much she can tolerate him, if she is indeed who she seems to be. Induced by her love without condition, Kang-do slowly reveals a vulnerable child with lots of hurts inside him; he eventually finds himself depending on her care, and they momentarily have a nice time together as a mother and her son.The tension in the drama largely depends on the simple but fearless performance by Cho Min-soo, who deftly maintains the elusive side of her character even at the most emotionally anguished moment. Their characters may look silly when they behave like a mother and her little son, but we come to accept the emotional bond forming between them.

And later scenes become very intense and heart touching. Overall I do not think it is one of his best films because of its several flaws, but I must say it is nice to see that this talented director is still capable of making a movie with conviction, power, and several interesting things to talk about.

• Review originally posted at The Frame Loop. Visit www.theframeloop.com -

Even before the first image of an ominously hanging, rusty hook, Pieta comes to CPH PIX Film Festival with a great deal of infamy. The latest from South Korean, art-house provocateur Kim Ki Duk (3-Iron, The Isle) this unnerving revenge drama wowed last year's Venice Film Festival jury so much that it went on to beat Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master to the coveted Golden Lion award. Is it a better film than that aptly titled PTA project? Absolutely not. Is Pieta a gritty, harrowing and wholly engrossing exercise in cinematic tolerance? You're damn right it is.

Li Jung-Jin stars as Kang-Do, the merciless henchman to a crooked Seoul loan shark. Living in a threadbare apartment, with a diet consisting of half-cooked meat, he scuttles across the city, ruffling up people's feathers and making sure they pay up their debts, or else suffer the brutal consequences. His lonesome, pitiful existence is transformed by the arrival of Mi-Sun (Jo Min-Soo), an elderly woman claiming to be his estranged mother. Seeking repentance and the love of the inhumane monster she birthed and abandoned, the disbelieving Kang-Do puts her through a slew of horrific tests that will prove their bloodline, from eating dismembered body parts, to unsolicited incest. Boundaries are crossed, taboos busted open, and a repugnant relationship ensues.

Despite the industrial slum setting and the subtext of tooth/limbless capitalism, Pieta conforms to a typical Greek tragedy plot line. With each revelation more traumatic and sickening than the last, Kim tells the story with brute emotional force and savagery, without ever resorting to the ultra-violence made so common in South Korean cinema from the likes of Park Chan-Wook and The Vengeance Trilogy. While Jo Young-Jik's curious hand-held cinematography may look away from the most distressing of graphic acts, the pain lingers on the screen through Li and Jo's fantastic, expressionistic acting. The pair have a terse, inflammatory chemistry which is so enthralling that the mother-son relationship is all the more sickening.

Perhaps the film's success in Europe isn't all that surprising. Tackling the cruel storyline through emotional heft – without the archetypal glossy production values of the region - Pieta could be mistaken for a Lars von Trier or Gaspar Noé project. With a sublime first act, Kim gets lost in the knotty narrative he has laid out before him, and ties everything up in a stirring denouement that brings some genuine heart to the otherwise pitiful portrait of dog-eat-dog, Seoul city-living.

In that brilliant opening third, Mi-Sun turns to Kang-Do to denounce money as the 'beginning and the end of all things: love, honour, violence, fury, hatred, jealousy, revenge, death.' Unsavoury topics abound, Kim Ki-Duk combats them all with severe conviction in Pieta. If you can stomach such callousness, then this is diatribe is well worth a watch.

• Review originally posted at The Frame Loop. Visit www.theframeloop.com -

As a massive fan of Korean director Kim Ki-duk - I've never seen a film of his I haven't loved - I was eager to see what delights his new film PIETA had in store for the viewer. In some ways it's similar to a lot of his previous filmography, like BAD GUY, in which the protagonist is also the antagonist, and also similar to other Korean films I've seen like BREATHLESS.

The main character is a ruthless loan shark who makes a living from crippling those who owe him money; he gets the money back from their insurance claims. The glacial Lee Jeong-jin gives an icy turn as a truly horrible creation, but inevitably he thaws a little once you get to know him, and once the plot kicks in. This is a revenge story, but one done in a way that's both subtle and convoluted; it's a film that rewards close attention, else you won't have a clue what's going on.

Jo Min-soo bags the film's most interesting role of the long-lost mother who turns up seeking reconciliation. It's a difficult, unsympathetic part to play, and there are one or two sexual situations which go way beyond the realms of bad taste into some of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. As ever, though PIETA isn't really an explicit film, despite the sheer quantity of violent incidents that happen during the running time, and as a story it gets more and more engrossing as it goes on. The end is particularly profound, and the lush cinematography on a tiny budget makes this a beautiful film to watch, despite the depravity.

Pieta is the story of revenge in a most brutal way possible by giving one's own life, a story of mother's love for his son. Story tells us the extreme measures taken by a mother to take the revenge from a non-human brutal loan shark.

Jung-Jin Lee is living a lonely life whose sole purpose is to recover the loan from other people by making them cripple and claiming their insurance money. In doing so he has become so cold inside that he feels nothing and know no pain. Brutality is the everyday life matter.

Enters a woman stirring everything by claiming that she is his mother. she make him feel love, make him angry and make him feel pain just to take the revenge of her son. And when Jung-Jin starts to feel human again, she inflicted the deep scar into his soul by giving her own life.

Movie is full of disturbing content and makes for a haunting viewing. I am a fan of south Korean cinema and this movie takes the love affair to another level.

8/10

The 18th feature film written & directed by Korean cinema's most notorious filmmaker, Pietà tells the story of a sadistic loan shark who ends up crippling people for not paying their debts, which after added interest is 10 times the amount they borrowed. Torturing with no feelings, his life takes a changing course when a middle-aged woman claiming to be his long lost mother comes into his life out of nowhere.

The film has all the disturbing elements one expects from Kim Ki-duk and although the first half has no easy-to-digest moments, the second half plays out very well to end on a satisfying, even rewarding, note. Cinematography reflects the appalling nature of the subject matter while editing presents a well-sought balance. The performances are pretty impressive from its two leads & the rest of filmmaking aspects are finely executed as well.

On an overall scale, Pietà is a highly tragic story of love, loss, revenge & redemption that has much more to offer than just disgust its viewers. Sure, Kim Ki-duk takes extreme pleasure in making his audience flinch but he also backs it up with enough justifications for the violence in his films. Shocking, unnerving, pitiful, haunting & infused with Christian symbolisms, Pietà is an unsettling psychological study of a mother-son relationship that also presents a fascinating take on what famously is Korean cinema's favourite genre.