Ya the movie was good, good story seriously unexpected turnaround and as usual great directing throughout, but we are ensured that these 2 women love each other right? Then why did he had to show that last sex scene? i kinda found it absurd >.< :( or else a solid movie
shareIt was one of the stories she was forced to read called Bells on a Windless Night. It was about two woman.
shareShe was forced to read those sexy stories for the pleasure of her creepy uncle and those perverts he invited. Now that she's free from his grasp and happy, she wanted to enact that one with the woman she loved, of her own free will.
Or at least, that's my interpretation of it.
Yeah, at first I thought it was gratuitous as well but then realized the profound significance of it. To be able to love anyone you choose, for that love to be reciprocated in kind and to be able to express that love is the greatest freedom of all.
The metal balls in that final love scene, which were once used as a device for punishment, represented just how far she has come in taking control of her own fate. When her uncle forced her to hold one in her mouth as a child, she was essentially being "silenced." It served as a metaphor for her position as a woman in that maddening household and in that strictly patriarchal society in general. Bringing those balls out in the end showed that she has completely broken free of "the ball and chain" of her past life, of her sadistic uncle and the scheming suitor, and has taken full ownership of her sexuality and future.
I think you are reading way too much into this.
shareI don't think so at all.
That explanation really helped me to understand the ending. Why do people often say people are "over-thinking" or "over-analyzing" things, when they're just analyzing them, period? Especially things like movies and literature, which lend themselves to being thought about in this way...? ;)
I think that people often do overanalyze scenes or works and claim to find hidden meanings that were never intended and are mostly coincidental. Since Park is such a great filmmaker and he likely puts more thought into what is in his movie than most, it's possible there is that deeper meaning in this scene though.
shareAlso, Hideko was recreating the sex scene she read out loud the night she had sex with Sookee, the one that got her all hot and bothered during the blackout. The scene was The Handmaiden's take on Fingersmith's ending, where Maud ends up actually making a living writing lesbian porn books using her fantasies of Sue, taking her experiences and turning them around to her own benefit and in her own terms.
Here Hideko making that fantasy her own and using what she learned from the books for her own sexual freedom with Sookee was her taking her power back, in a way.
I wish I remembered where I read this, but IIRC the director pretty much said something like this in an interview.
Westward7 I agree with that. Basically it was a happy ending in the sense that she managed to turn her ordeal into something joyful
shareThanks for clearing that up!!! My boyfriend and I both left the movie saying "that was amazing, but the last scene seemed gratuitous and unnecessary to the story."
Makes more sense now... :)
Very good Wahid, you captured the sense of the entire movie: OVER-EXHAUSTING SEX SCENES, WITH A MILION DETAILS THAT BETTER LACKED IN ORDER TO INFLATE THE ROMANCE, an extremely versatile kid-actress, with a BILLION emotions in one look for 2 sec. in the camera, that were almost all missed in the development of the main story of the film. MOST LIKELY THE DIRECTOR IS THE UNCLE, 'cause I don't see any other blind and incapable entertainer that chose to film the butt of a kid girl instead of her eyes and smile, both engulfing the poetry of a timeless beauty and innocence. Too bad a guy decided to portray the love as lots of sex with a teen-girl. Excuse me, but it looks like a very poor choice! Too bad for the kid girl...
share[deleted]
Yeah I also thought it was gratuitous at first but as they intercut between the two women earning their freedom, and the two men in the dirty basement fantasizing about the women while mutilating and killing each other, I realized that having to watch that final sex scene made me a bit icky. Even though it was beautiful and romantic and showing their love for each other, I felt like one of the men in the basement sitting and watching them having sex. And that's my theory, that CWP wanted to make us feel, or maybe present himself as one of the men. On one hand showing a happy ending where the two women express their love for each other and the two men fantasize about it and die, on the other hand forcing a male gaze onto the viewer, forcing us to watch this lesbian fantasy, intentionally making us uncomfortable.
As a final victory for the con-man (forgot his name), he refuses to indulge in the fantasies and as doing so he has learnt something and gets to die with his penis intact.
And to be clear, I don't care if this is over-analyzing or if this is what the director actually intended. He only wrote the film, I saw it.
Okay so I need to establish the themes... Banana-nut. That's a good muffin.