`VENGEANCE' WITH A SWEET FACE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Just when you thought South Korean cinema must be running out of new riffs on pain and retribution, along comes ``Lady Vengeance.'' Following director Park Chanwook's alarming ``Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance'' and ``Oldboy,'' this capper to his revenge trilogy explores new frontiers of narrative complexity and spiritual devastation. If a movie about child murder and vigilante justice can possibly be transcendent, ``Lady Vengeance'' is that film.

Not as overtly bloody as Park's earlier features, ``Lady'' is by far the most disturbing. It delves so deep into the personal costs of both betrayed innocence and calculated revenge that the usual genre catharsis never arrives -- and would feel sinful if it did. Even absent that, there's more than enough transgression spread around. Some may actually get out of here alive for a change, but no one survives ``Lady Vengeance'' intact.

Told in a series of flashbacks so complex that they'd probably make big-time Park fan Quentin Tarantino's head spin, ``Lady'' charts the 13-year incarceration and conspiracy-fueled parole of Lee Geum-ja (sweet-faced Lee Young-ae). Convicted while still a teenager of the sensational kidnap-murder of a young boy, Geum-ja proved a model prisoner -- converting to Christianity, developing world-class baking skills, helping out a variety of fellow prisoners (sometimes by poisoning their tormentors).

Once released, however, Geum-ja takes a turn for the fatale. She rejects her religion, takes to wearing scary red eye-shadow, even chops off one of her fingers as an act of contrition in front of the dead boy's appalled parents.

It's all part of an elaborate plan cooked up with her ex-con friends to nail the creep who was really responsible for the crime. But more than one complication arises, the biggest of which proves to be Jenny (Kwon Yea-young), the Australia-raised daughter Geum-ja put up for adoption at birth. Determined to bond with her mother, the girl doesn't exactly get in the way of Geum-ja's plot, but her presence sure upsets the avenger's emotional determination.

Geum-ja is not the only one forced to screw up her courage when the moment of sadistic closure arrives. How culpability and expiation are spread among a community of mourners is as ingeniously worked out as the script's fluid yet followable sense of time (that big bandage on Geum-ja's finger helps us know when we're in the film's present tense).

Lee, best-known as what they call a sweetheart actress on Korean television, is more poignant than terrifying in the lead role. Which is as it should be; Geum-ja is such a tremulous bundle of conflicting impulses -- rage, maternalism, shame, righteousness, fear, deception, doubt and brilliance, for starters -- that the only way to make this particular deadly dame credible is to emphasize her fragility. Lee has an unavoidable ephemeral quality, and it gilds Geum-ja's tempered steel heart with a coating of true, troubled soul.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

LADY VENGEANCE - Three and one half stars

(R: violence, children in jeopardy, sex, nudity, language)

Starring: Lee Young-ae, Choi Min-sik.

Director: Park Chanwook.

Running time: 1 hr. 51 min.

Playing: Landmark's Nuart, West Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: Park's latest revenge thriller isn't as graphic as earlier ones, but may be even more psychologically violent -- and that's a compliment, as it leads to astounding revelations about guilt and justice. In English and Korean with English subtitles.