A GOOD LAWYER’S WIFE

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A GOOD LAWYER’S WIFE

Mar 06, 2019

Writer by Pierce Conran
View1780

2003｜104 MIN | Drama

DIRECTOR IM Sang-soo

CAST MOON So-ri, HWANG Jung-min, YOUN Yuh-jung, KIM In-moon, BONG Tae-gyu

RELEASE DATE August 14, 2003

CONTACT Myung Films

Tel : +82 31 930 6500

Fax : +82 31 930 6699

Email : woody0704@myungfilm.com

Around the turn of the millennium, as the Korean film scene was turning into the formidable industry that it is today, one of the most popular genres was the affair drama. Employing a franker approach to sexuality than its predecessors and daring to question the stability of family units in Korea, films such as E J-yong’s An Affair (1998) and JUNG Ji-woo’s Happy End (1999) took popular melodramatic narratives tropes, twisted them into something that cut closer to home and spiked the result with increasing doses of eroticism. Another director who had tread this path, with his debut Girls’ Night Out in 1998, was IM Sang-soo, yet in 2003 he delivered what is perhaps the most complex affair drama that Korean cinema has ever produced when released his third and most accomplished to date, A Good Lawyer’s Wife.

Ho-jeong (the good lawyer’s wife of the title) is married to Yeong-jak, a successful lawyer who works long hours, but also uses them as an excuse to spend time with his artist mistress. Yeong-jak’s alcoholic father’s liver is failing, leaving him with little time to live, while his mother is pursuing an affair as well. Meanwhile, Ho-jeong takes care of their adopted son and contemplates an affair of her own with the tempestuous boy next door who is clearly infatuated with her.

Starring MOON So-ri, just a year after she earned the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Rising Actor at the Venice International Film Festival for LEE Chang-dong’s Oasis (2002), A Good Lawyer’s Wife was invited to compete in Venice and proved to be also a hit at home, with audiences lured by the film’s titillating promotion.

Yet IM’s work, for all its provocative scenes of intimacy, goes far beyond the carnal charms of the standard affair drama, using the many trysts of the film’s protagonists (in this respect, the film’s Korean title ‘Cheating Family’ is more on the nose) to highlight the breakdown of family units in Korea through the twin pressures of male guilt, along with emasculation, and burgeoning female empowerment, two forces that grew in increasing opposition to one another. However, even that fails to cover the broad emotional and thematic spectrum that the narrative encapsulates, particularly as it approaches its dark and frequently striking third act.

MOON, who replaced another actress that dropped just days ahead of filming, is a marvel in the main role, while HWANG Jung-min, YOUN Yuh-jung and BONG Tae-gyu are also outstanding in their respective roles as the wife’s husband, mother-in-law and potential younger lover. The film also features exceptional photography from IM’s frequent collaborator, cinematographer KIM Wu-hyeong.

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