The Handmaiden
Breathtakingly erotic Korean thriller Dir: Park Chan-wook 2hrs 24mins (18)
This “dazzlingly complex psychosexual thriller” from director Park Chan-wook has been heaped with praise, said Andrew Lowry in Empire – and justifiably so. Nominated for the Palme d’or at Cannes, The Handmaiden is an “unapologetically kinky slice of erotica”, a “stirring” feminist fable of “women escaping from bastard men”, and a “milestone of LGBT cinema in conservative South Korea”. It is also probably the greatest achievement yet of the great Korean director; even more noteworthy than his sublime revenge drama Oldboy. And perhaps most importantly, it is a “damn good yarn”.
Inspired by Fingersmith, Sarah Waters’ ingenious 2002 novel, The Handmaiden transposes the action from Victorian England to Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s, where an attractive young Korean pickpocket named Sook-hee is recruited by “Count” Fujiwara, an elegant con man, to became maidservant to a Japanese heiress. Her task is to groom the heiress – under the nose of her creepy, pornography-addled uncle – to prepare the way for her seduction by the Count. But then a complication arises, said Mark Kermode in The Observer. Sook-hee falls for her mistress, who isn’t nearly as naive as she has been portrayed as being, and soon finds her feelings reciprocated. But this is only the first twist in a devilish plot that constantly tricks the audience with “delicious cinematic sleight of hand”. The film undoubtedly makes for “heady viewing”, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. One moment, it plays like “an upmarket costume drama”; the next, it’s a graphically erotic film noir.
Yet viewers will probably be “sharply divided” over whether The Handmaiden is “liberatingly erotic or a male wet dream”, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. In a scene of “scissoring” (you may have to look up the term), for example, the actresses show admirable commitment to their roles, but it all feels a bit “soft-porny”. Well, it worked for me, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. At one point, when the maid lovingly files her mistress’s serrated tooth, “I almost forgot to breathe”. There are times when you can’t help feeling the director is trying to have his cake and eat it, said Tom Huddleston in Time Out, adopting a fiercely anti-pornography stance, while serving up some sumptuously erotic visions. But there’s no denying the characters are beautiful sketched and performed, and the story is involving. For all the scenes of deceit and cruelty, “what resonates is the love story”, and the liberated ideals underpinning it. “The cinematic equivalent of drinking three glasses of champagne in the bath, The Handmaiden is a film to luxuriate in.”