SECONDSCREEN
For while it may be directed by Chan-wook Park (who brought us Oldboy and Stoker) and is colourfully subtitled in both Japanese and Korean, it’s actually based on Sarah Waters’s British historical lesbian thriller Fingersmith. So if you’ve read that or saw the TV adaptation, you’re definitely on familiar ground, despite the action being transposed to Japaneseoccupied Korea.
The film retains Waters’s three-part structure and I loved the first section that sees Sook-Hee (Tae-ri Kim) arriving at an extraordinary Anglo-Japanese mansion apparently to become maid to the beautiful Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim) but actually to take part in a complex plot to relieve her of her fortune.
But the pace slows to a crawl as the story is retold from Hideko’s point of view and Park ups the extended, if non-explicit lesbian sex scenes, which, thanks to both actresses being very pretty, seem to stray – a tad uncomfortably – into the same erotica that Hideko’s sinister uncle turns out to be dealing in. It’s stylish and both Kims are terrific, but it’s a long slog.