Shadows in the Palace (궁녀) by Kim Mi-jeong (김미정) 2007
15 January 2008An impressive looking film, and quite an epic for a first time director, though some of the impressiveness of the sets is reduced by knowing it was shot on the same set as The King and the Clown (for which Kim worked on as an Assistant Director). The film looked great and was well acted, and even had a decent enough story, if only it wasn’t for the addition of supernatural elements, which are not only never explained, but serve to lessen the story of the lives of these maidens that worked in the court, and had very little control over their own lives. I would recommend this film if it didn’t have the supernatural elements, but with them the film is too long and drawn out, and doesn’t have a good enough conclusion. The Region 3 Korean DVD does look great, but isn’t worth the price.
Imperial nurse Chun-ryung [Park Jin-hee (박진희)] illegally had a baby while working in the palace, when you must stay as a virgin, but she snuck off into the woods and abandoned the baby, returning to her life in the palace. Then maid Wol-ryung [Seo Yeong-hee (서영희)] is found hung, Chun-ryung looks after the body, and she realizes that the woman was dead before she was hung. The body was found by another maid Jeong-ryul [Jeon Hye-jin (전혜진)] who stole a jewel off the body when she found it. Chun-ryung believes it is a cover up, and wants to find out the truth, but everyone else seems against her. Especially the house of the royal concubine Hee-bin [Yoon Se-ah (윤세아)], who has had the only male heir to the Emperor, much to the chagrin to the empress.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS...
Chun-ryung keeps the investigation going, as she knows it has to have something to do with the nephew of the king [Kim Nam-jin (김남진)] who was the one who got her pregnant and then abandoned her as soon as she was pregnant, which is a death sentence for a maid in the palace.
More deaths start to happen, and a strange black cloud comes and kills people in the palace.
Eventually through a long and convoluted plot, we find that the concubine is not the mother of the child, it is fact the maid’s Wol-ryung, who also turns out to be the sister of the concubine. There is also another plot with a mute maid, who was also seduced by the nephew of the kind, and he chases down Chun-Ryung, but falls and is taken by the black mist.
Eventually we learn that it was the head maid of the concubine who killed the maid in order to cover up the sons patronage.
They have the annual maid ceremony where maids are punished, and an innocent maid is to have her hands cut off, but in fact it is the old woman, who was switched for the other maid. And it turns out the Concubine has been infected by whatever mysterious force, and she saves her son, and also saves Chun-ryung who tells nothing of what she learned and becomes the maid of the King to be.
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The film is gorgeous and could have been good, if they had left out the supernatural element and just made it about the life of these maids and how horrible their lives actually are. This all got lost in the supernatural elements that were never explained though.
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