Untold Scandal
Writing a blogpost about “Dasepo Naughty Girls” left me totally exhausted. I guess I really wanted to explain why I liked it so much, and explain it well. In comparison to that, writing about “Untold Scandal” is significantly easier. There really are only three reasons why I am watching the film: 1. it’s the director of “Dasepo Naughty Girls”, 2. it’s on Netflix and 3. it has Jeon Doyeon in it.
Originally, only reason no.2 was relevant and the film caught my eye because I love ‘scandalous’ stories like this. Having finished the film though, I realized that the biggest merit of the film is its source material. “Les liaisons dangereuses” is one of the famous stories I like. Here are some others, in descending order of how obsessed I am with them: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Eugene Onegin, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Alice in Wonderland, Orpheus, and Iphigenie. (I am sure I forgot a few here, and tomorrow I’ll add them thinking “How could I ever forget about it?”) I also enjoy seeing the same story in another version, like “The Front Page” or “The Women”. It is all related to how it’s more interesting to see how a certain story is being told, not what exactly happens. I think that most bad adaptations of good books make this big mistake – just because “Anna Karenina” is brilliant will not make your movie great.
For “Les liaisons dangereuses”, I find it especially remarkable that I have read the majority of the book (OK I actually stopped right after the wonderfully proto-feminist monologue of the Marquise de Merteuil) and saw several adaptations of it. I still think that “Cruel Intentions” is a worthy adaptation, having garnered its cult following for a reason. Perhaps this is just my teenage nostalgia speaking, but I personally am amazed how much the adaptation makes sense. My first introduction into the story was with this film, and its end made me (correctly) guess that Valmont dies in a duel in the book.
The Korean adaptation also makes sense, but I found it to be much less elegant. “Les liaisons dangereuses” is a purely Western story, and an Asian playboy would rather behave like Genji than Don Juan. These are cultural subtleties in how men and women interact that I can’t really describe (I should probably think about it a little), but there were several points in the film where I wanted to exclaim “They would never do this in an Asian drama!” Instead, they turned this raunchy sex drama into a tragic love story, and the third time they made Jeon Doyeon’s character faint I laughed out loud. She would faint a fourth time again. This story, well, it just doesn’t work as a tragic love story, and I fail to take it seriously.
Just like in “Dasepo Naughty Girls”, the visuals of this film are stunningly beautiful at times. But make no mistake, this is a rather tedious, slow-paced adaptation which feels like it never ends. Thanks to a great story and a good director, it’s probably more watchable than your average Korean period drama, but I am not sure I would recommend it.
Now for the hail for bullets:
- The slight changes in the settings are quite insightful. Here, I find Madame de Tourvel’s character most interesting. In the original novel, she is someone’s wife, in “Cruel Intentions”, she is some girl who wants to remain virgin before getting married, and in “Untold Scandal” she is a widow whose marriage never even got consummated. Basically she reflects how chastity is perceived in these different societies – and the way it practically never exists. In other words, in aristocratic France everybody cheats, in today’s New York everybody has sex before marriage and in 18th century Korea everybody remarries after your previous spouse has died.
- I absolutely love Jeon Doyeon’s hanbok in a light pink/brown combination. While I find most hanboks terribly cheesy-looking, they are surprisingly nice in this film. Especially when the chosen colors reflect So-ok’s youthfulness, Lady Jung’s chastity, Madam Jo’s bitchiness, and the loudness of the whores.
- There even is a Chinese version! It stars our all-beloved Zhang Ziyi, so I want to see it.
- I am amused to see how the sex paintings look strangely Chinese, much like the historical Chinese porn exhibition they used to have in the Dahlem Museum in Berlin. They actually are quite erotic.