Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri (Amazon Studios/Magnolia Pictures)
Set in 1930s, when Korea was under Japanese occupation, The Handmaiden starts as a benign, lush period drama. Its nearly two-and-a-half hour running time seems to indicate a stately romantic epic. But if you know anything about director Park Chan-wook, you know it won’t stay that way for long.
Sook-Hee (Kim Tae Ri) is a young Korean woman hired to care for the wealthy Japanese aristocrat Lady Hideko (Kim Min-Hee) in her secluded mansion. Sook-Hee plays the part of the naive servant, but she’s a gifted pickpocket whose family is well-versed in the art of the swindle. In fact, she was hired by Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo), who plans to marry Lady Hideko, have her declared insane and make away with the inheritance she’s owed by her Uncle Kouzuki (Jo Jin-woong).
Things don’t go as planned.
I won’t spoil the film’s myriad twists, though you may see some of them coming. What you may not see coming is a dramatic arc that careens from criminal procedural to erotic drama to gory revenge tale.
It’s par for the course for a director best known for his Vengeance trilogy (which gets a clever callback late in this film—lets just say an old eight-legged friend gets his satisfaction). Park’s last film was his English-language debut Stoker, which suffered from inconsistent casting and a somewhat diluted vision. The Handmaiden is anything but diluted. It’s essentially the same gothic milieu as Stoker, but the consistently strong cast and the roving camera that gives you a wide-angle tour of a half-Victorian, half-Japanese mansion—and the sex and violence—keeps things moving for a two-and-a-half hour ride that never gets boring.
That architectural mongrel is an apt setting for a movie about clashes: between the conqueror and the oppressed, the criminal class and the aristocracy, propriety and bold candor, innocence and experience. As Sook-Hee feigns demureness to earn her mistress’s trust, the movie draws you in with expert cinematic technique before it immerses you in its lurid tale.
It’s not for the faint-hearted, but The Handmaiden is one of the best movies of the year.
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Directed by Park Chan-wook
Written by Chung Seo-Kyung and park Chan-wook. Based on a novel by Sarah Waters.
With Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Jo Jin-woong
Not rated; contains strong language, scenes of explicit sex and graphic violence.
144 minutes
Opens today at Landmark E Street Cinema and Angelika Mosaic
