Independent Films, Film Profiles

A Good Lawyer's Wife

A Good Lawyer's Wife (바람난 가족, Baramnan Kajok) is a 2003 South Korean film written and directed by Im Sang-soo. The film is about the various affairs of members of a dysfunctional South Korean family.Chang-geun (Kim In-mun) is a successful lawyer who works long hours. While he is working, his wife Ho-jeong (Moon So-ri), who gave up her dancing career in order to be "A Good Lawyer's Wife", raises their young adopted son and works as a dance instructor in the local gym.Chang-geun's father, an alcoholic with a fatal liver failure, has not slept with Chang-geun's mother in 15 years. She is having an affair with another man, and when Chang-guen's father finally dies, she tells Chang-guen and Ho-jeong about her relationship with the other man -- an old friend from her grade school -- and says that she even plans to marry him. Her daughter-in-law Ho-jeong supports her.Ho-jeong herself cannot achieve an orgasm from Chang-geun. But for reasons that are not made clear in the English subtitles, he is not satisfied by her either and is having an affair with a young woman, who is an artist and a former model (Baek Jeong-rim). By having her pegging (sexual practice) him, he receives from the young woman the satisfaction he lacks at home.When Ho-jeong catches her teenager neighbor (Bong Tae-gyu) peeping on her undressing in her apartment, she is, at first, angered. But she then decides to fulfill his peeping wish and allows him to see her doing nude gymnastics through the window. He then follows her on his bike and even barges into her dance class. She eventually follows him to the cinema where they talk. As they watch a movie, she teases him by acting oblivious to him groping her breasts.Meanwhile, Chang-geun runs a drunk motor cyclist off the road while receiving a blowjob from his young mistress. Chang-guen takes the man to a hospital but drops off his girlfriend on the way; his primary concern is that the presence of his girl friend not become public knowledge. Due to the other driver's reputation as a quarrelsome eccentric alcoholic, the authorities assume that the other driver is entirely responsible for the crash.Chang-guen promises the man, a postman who needs to be able to drive to keep his job, that if the postmas does not mention that there was a woman in the car he will use his legal connections to make sure that the man does not suffer any consequences for having been driving while drunk.One evening, after she Ho-jeon finally learns about her husband's affair, she tells her teenage neighbor to follow her without giving any details except suggestively saying "I hope you'll be okay". She takes him to the abandoned dance hall. Without exchanging a word, she just allows him to mount her, but he soon stops and rolls aside (apparently the victim of premature ejaculation). Not giving up, she gives him a blowjob. She then mounts him herself while at the same time giving him a handjob, moving in spasms and moaning loudly as she finally gains her long sought orgasm.The father of Ho-jeong's teenager neighbor soon finds out about their affair and exposes it to Chang-geun unaware that Chang-guen apparently doesn't care what his wife does. However, Chang-guen fails to keep his promise to the postman. The postman kidnaps Chang-guen's adopted son and throws him off a building to his death. The postman then commits suicide.Chang-geun and Ho-jeong are devastated by their son's death. Ho-jeong blames Chang-geun for starting the chain of circumstances that ended with the murder/suicide.The story ends on an enigmatic note. Ho-jeong discovers than she is pregnant and knows that Chang-geon cannot be the father. He offers to accept the child as his own but she informs him that he is "out of the picture."It is unclear from the final scene if Chang-geon is hurt or relieved by her announcement.The story also addresses the legacy of the Korean War and its impact on many families. Chang-geon's father and grand-father escaped from the communist north -- apparently during the war. Chang-geon's grand-mother and his father's sisters remained in the north and "perished." Chang-geon's father is last seen in the final stages of dementia singing a communist anthem honoring North Korean leader Kim Il-sung.Chang-geon goes out into the country to inform his grand-father of the death and discovers that his grand-father has been dead for six months, and that his grand-father's young female companion had not notified the other members of the family.There is also a subplot about the excavation of a mass grave containing the remains of Korean civilians who were killed -- apparently by the communists -- during the Korean War.