Lady Vengeance (as it’s known in the West) really boils down to one metaphor that’s repeated in various forms (tofu, snow, cake, skin, etc.), the point being that to be clean, to be pure and white is the goal of the vengeance seeker. The hope is that the act of taking revenge will allow the person to move past that event, to allow them to make their life about something else from that point onward, that vengeance, once taken, will wipe their life clean.
But embedded in the symbols used to convey this idea is the knowledge that such a starting over is all but impossible. The white tofu, for instance, is the traditional gift received by a person getting out of prison. Although it’s supposed to represent a clean slate, it's also plain and simple and boring. Thus, to accept the new, clean life that the tofu represents is to accept that life will be plain and boring. This sort of double meaning is true of all the white symbols in the film. For instance, snow, besides being cleansing and blanketing, can also be treacherous; all skin has blemishes, etc.This is an incredibly dense metaphor because, at its heart, Park sees vengeance as the impossible search for redemption. The yearning for redemption is valuable and honorable but to hope to find it in revenge is, as Park has said, quite stupid. And at the end of this film, for the first time in the trilogy, the main character comes to understand the futility and stupidity of vengeance and thus, quite rightly, plants her face in the white cake.
The film shows events from two separate times in Lady Vengeance's (Gaem-Ja’s) life. In one she's in prison for crimes she did not commit. And in the other, she's seeking revenge against the men who put her in prison. In each of these situations Gaem-Ja is a very different person. In prison she's kind-hearted and loving. After prison she's cold and calculating. It’s hard to know which of these two personalities is closer to the real Gaem-Ja but it seems probable that both are facets of the same person and co-exist to some extent at all times. Thus, the question must be asked, if prison is the worst place a person can spend thirteen years (or at least one of the worst places) how can Gaem-Ja be a better person in prison than out? Is it the thirst for vengeance that makes her so cold and removed? Or is it simply that this is who Geam-Ja thinks she needs to become to carry out her mission?
Whatever the answer, the point Park seems to be making is that lusting for revenge turns a person into a monster only because it makes the person complicit in becoming that monster. Prison, of course, can do this as well but only if the person allows it. Vengeance, because it's a personal choice, will always turn a person into a monster if it's carried to its natural conclusion.
After Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy, Park Chan Wook was accused of glorifying revenge, of romanticizing it as a way for a person to take back control of his life. He has long denied that revenge is ever justified but nonetheless its power over a grieving person is very great. With Lady Vengeance, he has finally made a revenge film in which no one can possibly mistake his intentions. By having his protagonist turn the actual act of vengeance over to a group of similarly wronged individuals, he shows just how empty revenge really is. By not having Gaem-Ja, the protagonist, the person the audience has been rooting for the whole film, take the final revenge, he makes his point very clear. Robbed of a character for whom they feel sympathy, the audience can only view the vengeance for what it is, the empty act of ruined people who, far from starting over fresh, will be forever changed for the worse.
