Directed by:
Chan-wook ParkCinematography:
Chung-hoon ChungComposer:
Young-wook ChoCast:
Min-hee Kim, Tae-ri Kim, Jung-woo Ha, Jin-woong Cho, Hae-sook Kim, Yong-nyeo Lee, So-ri Moon, Eun-hyung Jo, In-woo Kim, Byeong-mo Choi, Dong-hwi Lee, Lee-woo Kim (more)Plots(1)
Chan-Wook Park co-writes and directs this Korean drama adapted from Sarah Waters' novel 'Fingersmith'. Set in Korea in the 1930s, with the country under Japanese colonial rule, the film follows orphaned pickpocket Sook-hee (Tae Ri Kim) who is hired by a con artist posing as Japanese Count Fujiwara (Jung-Woo Ha) to act as the handmaiden of heiress Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim), a ploy which Fujiwara hopes will allow him to pocket the heiress' wealth for himself. As Sook-hee tries to persuade Lady Hideko to fall for the Count she instead is the one who forges an intimate bond with her new employer. The story of Hideko's troubled upbringing unfolds as the two women revel in their passionate, new relationship and explore their previously repressed desires. (Artificial Eye)
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Reviews (10)
For some viewers, The Handmaiden will be a lesbian romance in which the path to discovering one’s own identity and overcoming the patriarchy leads through an encounter with a giant octopus. Others may see the film as a reflection on artistic representations of the female body and the pleasure of looking at them or simply as an erotic thriller with a clear and cohesive narrative in the manner of Hitchcock. Beneath the beautiful surface, however, there are enough other layers with which Park seems to be so fascinated that you'll want to see The Handmaiden several times despite its extraordinary length and slowly rising pace.
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Park Chan-wook is probably my least favorite Korean director. This film was boring. Interesting in terms of art, the atmosphere was decent, even the eroticism was nice, but that was it. The story was too convoluted for me, I got lost. There’s no gore, nothing much to praise. I survived, I'll give it a weak three stars with gritted teeth. Still better than Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, but never again. 50%.
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Instead of a refined erotic game, it is more of a shallow voyeur prank that is neither provocative nor too eccentric. Its excessiveness lies in the overuse of sentiment, melodramatic clichés and naive acting. The potentially great double-twist is completely lost in the storytelling, which lacks economy and finesse. Subjectively, it took 4 hours. Park filmed his Sucker Punch to name the hidden chambers of desire and lust, as well as the devastating manipulation associated with them. But this much more than a masochistic feast evokes a red library with a few over the top violent scenes. Disappointment... [Cannes 2016]
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Typical Park, where you can't trust so much as a coffee mug, which once again captivates with its moral resignation and charmingly inappropriate humor. This time it doesn't thematize anything beyond the edge of the film, but instead resembles a child in a sandbox building a castle out of fifty little dolls, each belonging to a different battered child. On first viewing, it makes your head spin, not only because of the jumbled plot, but especially because of Park's tradition of multi-layer shots that throw in several pieces of plot information at once, and you even have to marvel at their incredible mise-en-scene and work with movement and focus.
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I believe The Handmaiden will be something completely different for a lot of viewers. More important than the story, which has an excellent twist, is the completely original, borderline-perfect treatment. The best thing about the whole film, in my opinion, is the division of the story into three parts and the precise cinematography. Actually, I can't even say that the cinematographer did a good job with it, it would sound somehow underrated. This was no acting, it was a very skilled job, shot with confidence. Another thing that plays a very important role and adds to the overall impression is the costumes. It was also because of these and the hair styling that some of the shots were so famous. Of course, no less credit goes to the actors, who performed something incredible under the direction of Park. The only thing I could easily do without are the rather lengthy sex scenes. It's hard to say how the rest of the film would have affected me in their absence, and if the story would have lost its weight without them. In any case, there were too many of them. And they were also quite detailed and perhaps a bit too overt. /// Since I still can't get The Handmaiden out of my head, I'm raising the rating one more star after a month.
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