The word is associated with the Blessed Virgin's embrace of Christ's dead body, and thus her special state of grace and transcendental pity. There's no explicit allusion to any of that here – though a red neon cross is prominent in one night-time shot of the city. Korean film-maker Kim Ki-duk's lowlife drama of redemption stars Lee Jeong-jin as Gang-do, a hoodlum who collects for a loan-shark mobster, forcing his indebted victims to cripple themselves in gruesome fake accidents before settling up with the insurance payout. A strange, middle-aged woman arrives to disrupt things: she is Mi-son (Jo Min-soo), who claims to be the mother who abandoned him as a baby. Passionately, she declares that her selfishness has caused the evil in him, begging his forgiveness. Her story triggers seismic changes in Gang-do's mind. The film is far from a masterpiece, despite its festival success, but it bristles with Kim's trademark anger and agony. It could work as a vaguely Greeneian Hollywood remake, or a pulpy, nasty companion piece to Bong Joon-ho's Korean movie Mother (2009).
o's reaction to this news is typical; he forces Mi-son to eat a lump of his flesh before attempting to rape her, claiming: "I came from here, I'm coming back in…"While there's no doubting the style and panache of Kim's extreme cinema (which has run afoul of the censors' scissors in the past), his self-conscious excesses all too often undermine his work – for all its theo-philosopical gesturing this lacks the grace and power of 3-Iron or Spring, Summer…, both of which proved that Kim is most powerful when playing sotto voce. A mid-point transition from Lady Madonna to Lady Vengeance leaves some of the narrative's most intriguing questions unanswered, as Oedipal metaphysics give way to something altogether more mundane, but Jo and Lee are committed leads, the former carrying the burden of the movie with motherly care and attention.