what happened at the end? last part i saw: the mom was in the subway running after her daughter; then she started remembering that she was the 1 who'd really murdered everybody.
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This is one of my favorite films and I've watched several times.
My take: it is NOT a supernatural film, but a psychological horror.
The Woman has many personalities
little girl
teenage balleria
beautiful woman in her early 30's (lead character)
overweight, plain, middle-aged woman (her "real" personality)
old homeless lady
She was molested by her father when she was very young. (little girl)
Had a nervous breakdown when she was in her teens (ballerina)
The lead character is her idealized self. That personality falls in love with the male psychiatrist--whom she sees as the "designer" fixing her "Eye Doctor Office"
She "kills" her overweight, plain, middle-aged self.
I do NOT think she was EVER married--husband and father are the same person. She "kills" her father/husband--(who really died of pneumonia)
She loves but is constantly trying to kill her "little girl".
When the doctor correctly rebuffs her sexual advances, she metaphorically "kills" the "designer" (stops responding to therapy)
In the end, madness completely overtakes her. She sink deeply into her darkest subconscious. The only surviving personality is the little girl, who has become evil.
In Freudian terms, the shoes signify her sexuality, which is used to attract men but which caused competitiveness, destroyed her friendship with other women, relationship with her mother, and eventually destroys her.
The Marriage/Japanese Military ballet seems like a combination reference to her parent's dysfunctional marriage/harsh treatment of Koreans by the Japanese during WWII.
I have yet to completely figure out what the "old homeless lady" represents. My guess is that she is a Jungian Archetype-- the Dark Side which lives in all of us.
It's an amazing, incredibly complex film, with brilliant acting. Every time I watch it I get yet another insight.
Anyone looking for a typical slasher horror film will hate it, but if you are looking for something deeper, this is one to consider
I think it's possible that you are over analyzing this movie and seeing things that aren't there. Maybe I watched a different version than you but I can't see where you got any of this from.
"She was molested by her father when she was very young. (little girl)
Had a nervous breakdown when she was in her teens (ballerina)
The lead character is her idealized self. That personality falls in love with the male psychiatrist--whom she sees as the "designer" fixing her "Eye Doctor Office"
Where is the evidence of molestation? There was no mention of this in my version.
Why do you think the designer is a psychologist? Again I saw no evidence. Maybe if he wasn't really a designer then maybe he was a plumber. There is as much evidence to support this.
"I do NOT think she was EVER married--husband and father are the same person. She "kills" her father/husband--(who really died of pneumonia)"
When was there any mention of pneumonia? She put a stiletto in his eye.
"When the doctor correctly rebuffs her sexual advances, she metaphorically "kills" the "designer" (stops responding to therapy)"
you mean the plumber?
I seriously think we watched different movies but the version you saw sounds much better than the over long, unoriginal, boring crap I saw.
Worst Korean movie I have seen.
I also think you are interpreting the movie wrong. This isn't a psychological horror movie like A Tale of Two Sisters!
Your interpretation is still very interesting but I don't think it has a lot to do with the director's intentions...
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I love the movie but what were you watching?! I usually read a lot into movies but I didn't get anything like that!
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Yeah ... Sorry sweety, you over analized the hell out of it. It's a really simple story, the director just made it seem complicated.
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Man, I was gonna say...I missed a lot of this.
shareI also think that the mother and little girl are one person. I honestly think she "is" several characters in this movie.
BUT, I also agree the OP is over analysing it all. I never heard anything about sexual abuse etc.
I wonder, what's the story she gets from the flashbacks??
So confusing.. should watch it again.
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The most I can see as far as sexual abuse goes is when blood comes pouring out of the little girl from between her legs (really disturbing, btw, haha).
However, I think it was pretty confusing too. Was she supposed to be the dancer reincarnated or something? The ghost referred to her as Oki, and the old woman recognized her as Oki too.
My simple "analyzation" would be that Oki manifested herself in our main character when the main character found her husband with another woman in the same way that the dancer found her lover with another woman. I think that the events didn't happen exactly in the movie as they seemed to be.
- She finds her husband, kills him
- She and her daughter move to the apartment
- She finds the shoes and kills the teenage girl (her "innocently" picking up the shoes was a lie she imagined up for herself; she says various times in the film that she "just picked up the shoes" as if she's defending herself, I think she's subconsciously trying to cover up the fact she killed that girl for the shoes)
And then everything else is basically in chronological order as you see it.
The one thing that did confuse me was when Tae Soo (I think that was the daughter's name) went missing before the mum finds her husband with the other woman. I thought later on we'd find out that Tae Soo had died/gone missing when that happened, the woman killed her husband, and the rest of her life with Tae Soo was basically a hallucination or some sort of dream-like state in which her daughter still lived. She left Tae Soo alone so often. But it doesn't make any sense with the rest of the film, so I trashed my own theory pretty quickly. :P
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I agree with mostly what you wrote ^^
The OP I don't agree with. A bit overanalyzed. Like someone said, there was no evidence of any father, psychiatrist, or pneumonia.
She stabbed the guy in the eye.
She slept with the designer.
And the pneumonia simply did not happen.
I'm not sure what to think of Tae Soo though. Was she a hallucination? A personality? An actual person?
I think Tae Soo may have been a personality of the Sun-jae. Um, actually I just understood what the OP was talking about with the abuse between the Sun-jae and her father. If Tae Soo was a personality it makes sense that her relationship with her father was so good. It was the idealized relationship between the Sun-jae and her father. And maybe her father cheated on her mother when Sun-jae was little and she walked in on them so that would explain her seeing her 'husband' cheating on her. That would also explain her extreme anger which led to his murder.
But that's IF Tae Soo is a personality of Sun-jae.
And that's what I'm confused about.
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What is it with steel wool? Is it steel? Or is it wool?
my boyfriend and i just watched this movie and we're both pretty sure tae-soo and sun-jae are separate characters (both of them real) because.............:
1. when the mum went to the ballet school the teacher was like 'tae-soo didn't come in today'
2. the boyfriend came to the hospital because sun-jae rang him about tae-soo being ill.
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I think it could work either way - be psychological or supernatural, until the end that is. The ending tips it over into the supernatural arena pretty conclusively.
As for Tae-Soo, there is no evidence for her being sexually abused by her father. I think it's disturbing that just because he's in her room, that it means he's been abusing her! Someone has issues with men.
Marta, You are on to something.
I'm wondering whether the designer is not also one of her personalities. The creative, relaxed sexually, lucid type. The true self?
Don't know if it will help new viewers, but Oki is a curt way of saying "wake up".
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