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The Villainess
#2
The Villainess is a Korean movie that, due to some glitch with the print (noted at the ticket window), lacks English subtitles.

Fortunately for me, I remembered by hearing aids.

Two groups of agents spy, scheme and do battle with each other.  Let's call them North Korea and South Korea.  But each side is fraught with so much infighting that you begin to realize there isn't just a North and South, but East, West, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest factions as well.  On top of that, there's double agents, triple agents, quadruple agents, all the way up to nine-tuple agents, which is the point at which I started to lose the thread of the narrative.

A teenage girl decides to kill everybody.  She comes close to succeeding before being captured -- by Southeast Korea, let's say.  She's subjected to some cruel torture -- because killing everybody isn't a very nice thing to try to do -- after which an evil plastic surgeon performs surgery on her face so that she looks, uh, well, exactly the same.

Except for a nick on her right cheek, which matches the nick on the right cheek of the guy she's in love with. 

Though it's never explicitly spelled out, I suspect they were actually conjoined twins separated shortly after birth.  When they realize this fact late in the film, it puts a dent in their budding romance.

Meanwhile ("meanwhile" plays a big role in this movie) an androgynous woman infiltrates the all-male governing body of, say, Southwest Korea, where she plays psychological games with everyone around her, including herself.

Oh, and then there's the villainess herself, who trains so hard that she has a baby.  The baby grows into a two-year-old girl whose superpower is talking with her mouth full of rice.

Near the climax, all the agents of all the factions scream and fight and bloodlet around the girl, trying to get her to swallow the rice.  But though she is terrified and crying (and my gosh she deserves an Oscar, and life-long psychotherapy), she keeps the rice in her mouth.

All in all, a very stylish production with some surreal sets and scenes and a complicated storyline replete with so many flashbacks that I couldn't keep track of who might be whom at different ages -- all on top of wild and brilliantly shot action sequences of astonishing variety.

Definitely worth a revisit when there's some English words at the bottom of the screen.
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Messages In This Thread
The Villainess - by Drunk Monk - 09-08-2017, 10:44 PM
Did we see the same movie? Well, yes we did. - by cranefly - 09-09-2017, 01:29 PM
Rice - by Drunk Monk - 09-09-2017, 06:59 PM
You're right about all the rain -- forgot to mention it - by cranefly - 09-09-2017, 08:32 PM
Sanguine - by Drunk Monk - 09-09-2017, 09:13 PM
Saw it again with subtitles - by cranefly - 01-18-2018, 01:11 PM
RE: The Villainess - by Drunk Monk - 01-18-2018, 03:14 PM
RE: The Villainess - by Dr. Ivor Yeti - 02-18-2018, 12:22 AM
RE: The Villainess - by Drunk Monk - 03-06-2023, 10:59 PM
RE: The Villainess - by Dr. Ivor Yeti - 03-06-2023, 11:03 PM
RE: The Villainess - by Drunk Monk - 03-06-2023, 11:29 PM

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