The movie Untold Scandal, by Lee JaeYong, was very intriguing and an ingenious story, though unnecessarily stretched out. There were many confusing parts, but in the end, everything was brought to-gether to make shocking sense. The main character, Cho Won (Bae YongJoon), wins a bet with his cousin, Madam Cho (Lee MiSuk), but in the process creates a fatal wound in the hart of others, as well as his own.
The main theme of this movie is that it is dangerous to play with other people’s hearts, bycause the repercussions can be unimaginable. Here, it not only causes the deepest emotional pain, but even death itself, and the lessons learned from this horrible experiment are lifelong.
The plot starts out with Cho Won making a bet with Madam Cho that if he is able to seduce a 27-year-old virgin widow, Lady Jung (Jeon DoYeon), then Madam Cho will give him one night of lovemaking as a reward. Otherwise, Cho Won must forefeit his enormous love life and lust, and become a chaste monk. Madam Cho will know he accomplished his task by receiving a cloth with the blood of Lady Jung. Through much intrigue, lying, and secrecy, Cho Won manages to break through the thick walls of Lady Jung’s heart, and make her believe he loves her. But the bloody rag is not enough for Madam Cho as evidence. This causes Cho Won to take more heartless measures. When Lady Jung visits him next, she finds him with another girl, and he tells her that he never loved her. Lady Jung is devastated and returns to her home village to tend to those ravaged by the plague going on there, and refuses to eat or drink. Word of this convinces Madam Cho that Jung really is in love with Cho Won, but by this time Cho Won’s heart is already with Lady Jung. After failing one last time to ask Lady Jung for forgiveness, Cho Won returns home, where he is stabbed by Jung’s outraged brother after hearing rumours about Cho Won and Jung. News of this takes the last shreds of hope away from Lady Jung and she takes her own life in despair, and Madam Cho, who was in love with Cho Won all this time, is devastated as well, and forced to flee the country with a leaden weight in her heart.
One of the strangest things in the movie is that every little prop in every scene is simply immaculate. Even in the secret Catholic meetings every garment is perfectly pressed and every inch of wooden floor is shining. Are the Koreans trying to please a certain audience with this, or does it carry some symbolic meaning to the movie? Additionally, many of the scenes seem very drawn out. If they were shortened, then the movie experience would be much better. What is most memorable about the movie (other than the pristine condition of everything) is poor Lady Jung and how her heart was completely shattered by a careless Cho Won.
Though mostly geared for women, Untold Scandal is an entertaining and fascinating rendition of the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos that highlights the importance of keeping a game involving people’s hearts from getting out of hand.
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