As the titles implies, “The Last Comfort Woman” is not an especially pleasant film. It deals with women pressganged by the Japanese government into offering sexual services to beleagured soldiers. We see women of multiple nationalities wonder where they’re being taken by train, and fight among themselves. It’s only when they arrive that the worst fears of the most misinformed girls are confirmed, and we watch several of them get raped, albeit not in a graphic manner.
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“The Last Comfort Woman” may sound like typical anti-Japanese nationalism, but in between the scenes of horrific rape there’s surprising nuance about the comfort women issue generally absent from the media that postdates it. For starters, “The Last Comfort Woman” can’t really call its victims sex slaves. We can see quite clearly that they are paid. Yes, they were tricked into signing fraudulent contracts and can’t leave. Nevertheless, as they are paid for their work, they can’t be slaves by definition.
This is particularly important as regards the Japanese comfort women. Yes, ethnic Japanese women also worked in the camps. And the ones we see in this movie are professional prostitutes. They knew exactly what they were signing up for, and consider their work in wartime brothels an informed patriotic improvement over their previous work situations. This makes them less sympathetic to the new girls, who they think are just amateur whiners. Well, for awhile anyway.
The arc from there is fairly predictable. We have Miyako (played by Kim Mi-yeong-I) grow more sympathetic to the situation of the younger girls, particularly that of Yeon-hee (played by Moon Na-eun). The camp is evil, but it’s a banal evil, and over time the girls who survive the worst of the situation are able to accept it. Yet the brutality continues unabated, and we have intermittent moments of not especially graphic horror throughout.
When I emphasize that the horror is not graphic, I mean that we don’t actually see any hits or penetration or nudity. “The Last Comfort Woman” is still an intensely uncomfortable movie, and writer/director Lim Seon makes a little go a long way by just letting the viewer imagine the more horrific details. For a movie filled with shocking imagery the understatement is quite potent. One great tragedy happens entirely off-screen, with the grief of one bereaved character serving as the only marker for why such a mundane wartime event should feel like a tragedy.
In spite of their seeming to be the chief villains, I was also struck how at times the soldiers too come off as victims. One just want a maternal figure to comfort them and tell them everything is going to be all right. Another, this one an ethnic Korean soldier, just encourages his assigned comfort woman to take a badly needed rest. Moments of minor humanity sparkle throughout “The Last Comfort Woman” and are its strongest selling point.
Review by William Schwartz
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“The Last Comfort Woman” is directed by Lim Seon, and features Moon Na-eun, Kim Mi-yeong-I, Rei, Jung Hee-ro, Kim Byung-soo-I, Kang Joon-gyu. Release date in Korea: 2015/08/13.
[HanCinema’s Film Review] “The Last Comfort Woman” (2021/10/06)
Source: Laban Lang Philippines
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