Villain and Widow

As the movie opens, professional art thief Chang-in (Han Seok-kyu, Shiri, An Eye for an Eye) confronts a weasel-like antique dealer (guest star Park Won-sang), who claims to possess a set of Ming Dynasty tea utensils smuggled out of China and valued at 2 billion won. Unfortunately, the dealer, trying to escape the police, falls to his death, leaving the location of the utensils unknown.

Believing that the priceless tea set is hidden somewhere in the dealer’s house, Chang-in disguises himself as a novelist and moves into a boarding room, rented out by the dead weasel’s widow, Yeon-ju (Kim Hye-soo, Tazza, Modern Boy). However, what he initially thought would be a piece of cake job rapidly turns into a nightmare, with Yeon-ju and her teenage daughter Seong-ah (Ji Woo) bumping into him and creating havoc at every turn, and his super-rich client (Uhm Gi-joon) threatening to break every bone in his body if he fails to meet the deadline.

One thing a prospective viewer must be aware of beforehand is that Villain and Widow, despite its title and frankly hoary premise, is neither a crime thriller nor a situation comedy. It is really a comedy of manners in which two fully-realized characters with deceptively obvious flaws clash against one another. The beauty of it is that screenwriter/director Son Jae-gon’s (My Scary Girl) personages are so well constructed, so wonderfully embodied by Han, Kim and the other actors, that the movie attains the kind of natural flow rarely seen in a Korean film.

Chang-in and Yeon-ju’s interactions evince the spontaneity and conviction of real-life figures reacting to real situations, yet always culminating in the desired effects, that can only be achieved when talented performers are giving their all under a supportive taskmaster. Even Chang-in’s simultaneously nail-biting and drop-dead hilarious effort to escape the basement, which must have been choreographed to the last centimeter during filming, looks completely unrehearsed, capped as it is by Han’s exasperated reaction guaranteed to bring down the theater.

Both Han Seok-kyu and Kim Hye-soo are in top form. Bestowed with his best role since A Bloody Aria (2006), Han is totally in his element essaying an outwardly urbane, insouciant scoundrel, trying to prevent his innate arrogance from ruining his carefully laid-out plan, and failing. Kim seemingly goes against type to play an ultra-neurotic, heavy-drinking and ill-mannered housewife, but she deftly harnesses her performance toward slyly comedic ends, reminding one of Meryl Streep.

Another strength director Son Jae-gon has, that he shares with a few other directors such as Lee Yoon-ki (My Dear Enemy), is the extension of compassion and understanding to basically all of his characters, including wholly antagonistic ones. Son even puts up a good case for sympathy for the chaebol client’s stature-challenged gangster enforcer (Oh Jae-gyun), without diminishing the physical threat he poses for Chang-in.

Likewise, the way he treats the victimization of Seong-ah by the “lookist” youth culture is thoroughly unsentimental and un-self-righteous: the mother-daughter relationship does not get resolved in a big, fake, tear-jerking reconciliation scene at the end, as they refreshingly maintain their own integrity.

Villain and Widow is not for viewers who like their comedy large and loud, or expect conventional genre thrills. Otherwise, it is a superbly intelligent and supremely witty piece of entertainment. Do you remember a scene in Jonathan Demme’s Married to the Mob where Michelle Pfeiffer tearfully relates how she ended up a spouse to a rodent-like Mafioso, and then crosses her eyes? If that scene made you laugh, yet also feel a tinge of sympathy for Pfeiffer’s character, Villain is most assuredly the right movie for you.