Woman, 69, raped. Where did you pause? At rape, or 69?
South Korean director Lim Sun-ae's ends with a nod to the MeToo movement
Woman, aged 69, raped by a 29-year-old man.
We often read this sort of headline in newspapers. But where do we pause? At rape, or at 69 and 29?
South Korean writerdirector Lim Sun-ae’s film, An Old Lady, asks that question, and then she wants us to consider: Is there an age limit to being raped? An Old Lady, which is playing at Tiff, opens to a black screen. We hear two people talking. It seems one is a nursing assistant, and he is with a female patient who has come for physiotherapy for her frozen shoulder.
“No one would guess your age,” he says. “Do you swim? Your legs... you don't look old at all.” He puts the infrared lamp on. “How long will it take?” she asks. “Nine minutes.”
The screen lights up and we stare at a row of curtained cubicles. There’s a loud beep and in one of them and the red light goes off. We are left with the feeling that something has happened. But the patient, Hyojeong (Ye Su-jeong, known for her role in Train To Busan), seems normal as she chats with Mr Nam (Ki
Joo-bong) who has come to pick her up. He owns a small book store, and she works for him. She was once his nurse.
At home, Hyo rubs her wrists. He notices a bruise on her arm. The nursing assistant was clumsy with the needle, she says. Later she says to him, “I should report it to the police.”
An Old Lady is framed in a way that everything seems to be against the woman who claims she was raped by the handsome nursing assistant, Lee Joong-ho.
He’s 29, and she’s 69 and in a live-in relationship. That makes the young cops snigger. It was not rape. It was consensual sex, Lee tells the cops. Though Hyo’s polygraph tells them that she may be telling the truth, there are bruises and she has the stained clothes she wore that day, old people, you know, they forget, they mix up things. And in any case, he says he didn’t do it. He’s 29. Handsome.
The burden of proof on the elegant, stylish Hyo keeps mounting. She must convince the cops first, to even attempt a proper investigation. She must herself prove to them that it was rape and not consensual sex. She is forgetting things. Maybe dementia is setting in. Maybe... But those flashes keep interrupting, disturbing her. The bruise on her wrist is fading, but it still aches.
Director Lim Sun-ae has said that she was riled up to make An Old Lady by a reallife case in which the warrant dismissal letter said, “There is not much reason for a young man to rape an old woman.”
An Old Lady ends on an empowering note, with a nod to the MeToo movement. But it leaves you wondering how many women must still be keeping their sexual assault, rape a secret because they are scared they’ll be asked, “Who will rape an old lady?”