Untold Scandal (Joseon namnyeo sangyeoljisa) first published by Movie Gazette, 21 April 2005
Korea, towards the end of the eighteenth century, and of the Joseon dynasty. The manipulative Lady Cho (Lee Mi-sook) challenges her louche cousin Master Jo-won (Bae Yong-jun) to impregnate young ingenue So-ok (Lee So-yeon) before she becomes concubine to Cho’s aristocratic husband. Jo-won prefers the far greater challenge of pursuing Lady Jeong (Jeon Do-yeon), an older Christian woman renowned for her chastity and “practically a brick wall” – and agrees to Cho’s wager that if he succeeds he can sleep with Cho, and if he fails he must become a monk. Soon he is wooing both Jeong and So-ok, while Cho takes So-ok’s young admirer In-ho (Jo Hyun-jae) into her own hands – but when Jo-won’s pretended love for Jeong turns into something real, Cho decides to play a heartless endgame, with tragic consequences for all.
“Should anyone sense similarities between this tale and actual historical events,” states a beautifully handwritten text at the beginning of E J-yong’s Untold Scandal (Joseon namnyeo sangyeoljisa), “be reminded that it is only fiction written for personal enjoyment”. Far from being merely an arch eighteenth century variation on the kind of disclaimer typically found in a film’s closing credits, these words are a sophisticated allusion to the great similarity between Untold Scandal and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ French novel from 1782 Les Liaisons Dangereuses. For at a time when the cinema of the East has become rich pickings for the West, and recent Korean films like A Tale of Two Sisters and Oldboy (not to mention countless Japanese films) are being reimagined by Hollywood, it is worth remembering that this trafficking in ideas can go both ways.
There have already been several Western adaptations of Laclos’ novel for the big screen – not only period pieces like Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and Milos Forman’s Valmont (1989), but also modernised revamps like Roger Vadim’s Paris-based Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 (1959) and Roger Kumble’s Cruel Intentions (1999), set amidst New York’s pampered élite. Untold Scandal is in many ways a very close rendering of Laclos’ original – it is set in the same period, it unfolds to the Western strains of baroque chamber music, and it clings to Laclos’ epistolary structure more than any of the other film versions – and even if Korea under the Joseon dynasty is further, both geographically and culturally, than this story has ever been made to travel before, the ensuing convergence of East and West is, like the relationship between (Confucian) Jo-won and (Christian) Jeong, more than merely the shallow flirtation it might at first seem. Laclos’ French plot fits perfectly into its new Korean costume, exposing similarities in the cloistered rigidity and decorous hypocrisy of these two courtly societies that might otherwise have gone unnoticed amidst more obvious differences of language and religion – and it also allows E J-Yong to break out of the highly conventionalised ways in which the late Joseon era had previously been dramatised, offering a new perspective on Korea’s past (much as in one scene Cho is able to spy on the distant Jeong using the imported novelty of a telescope).
Untold Scandal is a feast of visual sumptuousness, with a third of its considerable budget spent on the traditional hanbok costumes – all layers, curves and ties designed both to show off, and to confine, the body within. The aloof, painterly cinematography of Kim Byung-il imposes a similar sense of order on the characters’ raging desires and passions – as do the restrained performances, so that the slightest nods, gestures and glances speak far louder than the irony-laced edifice of verbal innuendo and deceit that Jo-won and Cho have erected to avoid the expression of true love.
More stylised, and far fleshier, than previous Laclos adaptations, this is a well-known scandal of sadism and repression as it has never been told before.
strap: Dangerous cross-cultural liaisons: E J-yong’s witty erotic tragedy has in fact been told before, but it looks exquisite in its perfectly fitting Korean costume.
Anton Bitel
