Director: Je-yong Lee.
AKA: Untold Scandal/ The Scandal.
Language: Korean
Release Year: 2003
Rating: * *1/2
Adapted from the novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, Untold Scandal is a titillating account of a wager between two prominent figures in their land, circa Chosun Dynasty, when Catholicism was rearing its head, and the obsolete policies and norms that tormented the then society, were giving way to a less conservative lifestyle and a little more freedom.
Sir Cho Won (Yong-jun Bae), a handsome widower and yet, a notorious philanderer, doesn’t miss any opportunity to bed the woman he sets his eyes on. In public’s eyes, he claims that his heart has place only for his deceased wife, but in the enclosed walls and under the sheets of his abode or any, his libido and promiscuity overrun and invade his “love” for his late wife. Age and status don’t come in his way of gratification. He’s also in a habit of painting his exploits of copulation in meticulous and graphic details for posterity.
Lady Cho (Mi-suk Lee), wife to Cho Won’s brother, plays the other principal character, and the one pulling the important strings. She enters into a deal with Cho Won by asking him to deflower a 16-year-old girl, who’s set to become her husband’s concubine. She wants to present her husband with a wedding gift in the form of a pregnant concubine, thus allaying her thirst for revenge. If Cho Won’s successful in this feat, Lady promises him a reward he’s been craving for a very long time: Her body. However, Cho Won thinks that to woo and then make hay with a nubile, ingenuous girl is beneath him, and hardly a matter to waste his talents on. He is more interested in a widow living next door, whose husband died before even they got married. Since then, the widow hasn’t been in any relationship, physical or emotional, and is renowned for her chastity. Breaking that wall of chastity is Cho Won’s next mission. But Lady doubts his competency, for the widow falls in the category of a very resistant strain of female kind, with no bone naïve enough to fall for a seducer. So this becomes the new deal that both the characters settle on. If Cho Won accomplishes his task along with the proof of the same, in the form of that virginal widow’s blood, Lady Cho will gladly submit herself to him. However, on failing to prove his prowess, Cho Won will have to adopt abstinence, by living the rest of his life as a monk. The deal is signed and sealed, with only the results to be delivered.
Cho Won uses all the tricks to paint a rosy and a sympathetic picture of himself in front of the widow, Lady Chung (Do-yeon Jeon). He presents her gifts, makes “anonymous” donations at the church she surreptitiously attends at the dead of the night, saves her from hired goons, and finally, confesses his love for her. However, all his corny efforts are met with stern opposition, and dissent from Chung. A fervent follower of all the rules and regulations the society has burdened a woman with, Chung retains her steadfast role of a faithful wife to a dead husband, and a dutiful daughter-in-law to her in-laws. But this hostility spices up the adventure even more for Cho Won, and increases exponentially, the determination to invade Chung’s privacy, whose fruits he believe, will be unlike any other.
Lady Cho, on the other hand, is busy scheming to get the soon-to-be concubine pregnant, before her husband returns from his business trip. An opportunity comes knocking her way, when a teenager is swept off his feet by this new concubine So-ok (So-yeon Lee), and the effect this boy has had on So-ok isn’t any different. Fearing slander, none of them are able to do anything about their puppy love, and that’s where Lady Cho comes in with her ingenious plan for retribution. She promises to secretly help both of them, paving the way for their eventual carnal deed. However, her plans are stymied when Cho Won decides to avenge his sullying at the hands of So-ok’s mother who, in fact, was also not excused from Cho Won’s womanizing ways. For the sake of his revenge, he shifts his focus from “tigress hunting” to “fox hunting” and inadvertently, helps Lady Cho prepare the gift she’d requested him of in the beginning. When brought to Lady Cho’s notice, she’s content that the ends were met, means notwithstanding.
The game grows profusely, with feelings being forced to sway, ambitions and libido realized under the guise of love, innocence stripped to its ugly bareness, and favors returned in full through sexual perversion. The movie culminates when one indulges into the guilty pleasure of love, releasing someone’s fury, resulting into inevitable fatalities and heartbreaks.
This period drama had supreme production values, and managed to take its viewers on a tantalizingly adulterous ride, set within the suffocating boundaries of Chosun Dynasty. Yong-jun Bae as the smooth-talking lothario plays all the notes perfectly. The lecherous traits required to portray his character shone brightly on his face, every time he slept with his next “trophy”. His good looks only managed to complement he natural gift of soliciting women he already possessed. Later in the movie, his turn as a bereft prisoner added some gray shades to his overall repertoire, which he delivered on credibly. Mi-suk Lee as the equally lascivious and shrewd Lady Cho was probably the showpiece of this movie. Her deftly woven display of a woman betrayed by her husband, and the lengths she’d go to, to exact revenge, reminds me of the expression, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. Mi-suk’s wicked take on this character deserves to be seen and praised. Do-yeon Jeon as the emotionally-repressed Lady Chung was admirable in her role. Shouldering the unfair and irrational expectations of the society to cater to the preconceived morals and decorum, and finally, yielding to the emotions of love, Do-yeon injected believable and considerable life in her character.
Now, I haven’t read the novel, nor have I seen any of its cinematic interpretations. So making references or comparisons is out of the picture. But, for my taste, the story was nothing more than a series of sensual adventures stringed together, with decent amount of steamy material, and vividly colorful photography thrown in for good measure. The essence, for me, was missing, with plenty of impetus being put on the accomplishments under the sheets, and the backstabbing and sabotaging to win the bet, playing the second fiddle. It’s only during the final reel of the movie, that some emotions are seen flowing, and some genuine friction coming out of the same between the characters, that got me hooked for a while. But it was one last trick too late, and I had just given up caring about any of them, or where the movie was headed, because I had a very good idea how it would turn out.
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