Personally, I was hardly expecting Punch Lady, a movie about an abused wife who challenges her homicidal/pro martial-artist husband to fight in the ring, to be a laugh-out-loud comedy. And yet that's really what Kyang Hyo-jin's movie is. Which isn't to say the violent scenes in which mousy Ha-eun (To Ji-won) gets pummeled by her psychotic spouse Joo-chang (Park Sang-uk) aren't horrific. They are. As is the climactic face-off during which the two throw punches/kicks in a packed arena broadcasting nationwide. But what transpires between is loaded with silly bits that never feel inappropriate, a miracle of sorts to be honest. How'd that happen?
Part of Punch Lady's ability to stay funny so much of the time can be attributed to the central theme being neither revenge nor justice. Kyang's screenplay is really about self-discovery instead. Which isn't the same as self-transformation by the way. Again, unexpectedly, Ha-eun doesn't change from timid housewife to unstoppable fighting machine. When she enters the ring, she still flinches whenever her husband approaches. All she has are a few key moves fueled by rage. There's actually an amazing moment mid-fight when she stops just to let out a few blood-curdling screams. These are the screams of a woman furious at being treated as less than human, as being part of a legacy of abuse that dates back to her mother (who was beat by her father) and now could continue through her daughter (already a target for Joo-chang's abuse).
Ha-eun's screams jar you back to the larger reality in which women can often be treated as second-class citizens and in which spousal abuse remains a topic people still don't like to talk about first- or second-hand. You could call Punch Lady a feminist comedy if you wanted to but I'm not so sure whether it holds up on that count. Her coach Soo-hyeon (Son Hyeon-ju) is positioned as a romantic figure because he wants to be her protector, even as his mock mastery of moves is simply his mimickry of what he learned the night before at a nearby gym. Enlightened as I might be and try as I might, I couldn't resist cackling at that first training montage which isn't a feel-good, get-tough sweatfest so much as it's a comical sendup of the masochism of pushing yourself to the limit and the sadism that accompanies helping someone else do the same. And only a misogynist wouldn't love her triumphant punches in the final round.
At this point in life, I guess I'll never know the intense love that accompanies being a parent. At least, not the type of love that involves carving the face off another child to make sure my own kid looks good. My feelings just don't run that deep. The devoted mother (To Ji-won) in Bong Man-dae's Cinderella is another case entirely though. She adores her only daughter (Shin Se-kyung); and since mom's a plastic surgeon, a car explosion that burns her child's face isn't about to get in the way of her precious baby having a Sweet 16 party one day. But face-swapping is complicated, karmically as well as surgically; can you blame the defaced orphan from wanting her own face back? Those rubber masks that she's been wearing are pretty but they get clammy and they look kind of creepy. Since a retributive transplant keeps getting postponed, the "secret sister locked in the basement" exacts revenge by getting into the minds of any of the mother's patients who happen to be the daughter's friends. Soon everyone hates the face that she was born with even if it has been improved. Maybe that's because they're all art students. Spending all that time at school carving faces from clay might set your beauty standards too high.