Disc 1
Audio Commentary by Director Byeon Hyeok and Han Suk-Gyu

Disc 2
Making Film
Interview
Deleted Scenes
Poster
Pusan International Film Festival
Premier
Post-Production
Trailer

"The woman saw how beautiful the tree was and how good its fruit would be
to eat, and she thought how wonderful it would be to become wise. So she
took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, and
he also ate it."

This is from Genesis 3:6 of the Bible, a verse that portrays the scene where
Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. The movie "The Scarlet Letter" starts
with this verse.

"The Scarlet Letter" is producer Byun Hyuk`s first film in four years, after he
became famous for the 2000 movie "Interview," his first feature film, and the
1991 short film "Homo Videocus." If a movie is compared to a style of writing,
then this one is made of Byun Hyuk`s unique "handwriting." It has a bold
theme, strong expression and creative style.

Kee-hoon (Han Suk-gyu) is a criminal investigator; intelligent and with
animal instincts. He has a submissive wife, Soo-hyun (Uhm Ji-won), and a
passionate mistress, Ga-hee (Lee Eun-joo). Kee-hoon feels guilty, yet
continues to move back and forth between these two women, who also
happen to be schoolmates from high school. One day Kee-hoon goes to a
murder scene and there he meets Kyung-hee (Sung Hyun-a), a woman
accused of murdering her husband.

"The Scarlet Letter" is the 21st Century Genesis Chapter 3. Mystery and
melodrama cover the movie from the outside, but they do not mean much.
This movie deals with - as Kee-hoon confesses at the beginning of the
story - man`s desire and original nature that "starts like a joke, but cannot be
turned down, and later leads to the destruction of the self." Among all
recently released Korean films, this one makes the closest approach to
human nature.

This movie resembles "Old Boy" in the way it portrays an undeniable fate
and expressions that go to the limit, but the density is much thicker. "Old
Boy" neutralized the intensity of the theme through screen techniques while
"The Scarlet Letter" intensified the degree of shock buy making the images
stronger.

Kee-hoon, the "Adam" in this movie, is a "bad man." He thinks he has
chosen between Ga-hee and Soo-hyun. He also thinks he has sinned
against both by continuing his relationship with one while being married to
another. However, what if the facts that Kee-hoon knows to be true are only
the tip of the iceberg? The movie portrays him as a dual figure, both
antagonist and protagonist.

The highlight of this movie is its last 20 minutes, where Adam (Kee-hoon)
and Eve (Ga-hee) are trapped in the car trunk. This scene is to be
remembered as one of the most shocking and intense scenes in Korean
film, showing the reality of a man being punished for having chosen desire.
The red tones that appear in both the trunk scene and the picture that is
overlapped with the scene are somewhat different. The former shows the
despair of approaching death, symbolized by the blood; the red
background is portrayed as a sensual quality that contains another truth.

The camera`s movement and the music are sticky and sweet, like the
tongue of the snake that whispered to Eve. This is because of the excellent
combination of Lee Jae-jin, who had worked on the music of the movies
"Peppermint Candy," "Failan," and "Oasis," and Byun Hyuk, who was
musically talented enough to be offered a chance to learn conducting under
the world famous conductor Chung Myung-hoon. Byun Hyuk actually
appears in the movie as a conductor as well.

Han Suk-gyu has come back to the screen after the failure of last year`s film
"Double Agent." The Low Life images he has shown in the movies "Green
Fish" and "No.3" kept coming back, but he succeeded in powerfully
portraying a complex character. The scene in which Kee-hoon goes to the
murder scene while singing "Pace Pace Mio Dio (Peace, peace O Lord in
English)" from the opera "La Forze del Destino", and spitting out foul
language is acting that only Han Suk-gyu can do.

And Lee Eun-joo was the tragic Eve. Not many actresses can show the
difference between "lustful" sex and "despairing" sex.