“What does a crook know about love?”
No, it’s not the tagline for Peter Greenaway’s omnihorny sensory overload of a film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). But there are many similarities between that tasty morsel of erotic cinema and the button-pushing of South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s lusciously twisted The Handmaiden.
Fully unbuttoning the already-loosened-by-a-BBC-adaptation corset of Welsh author Sarah Waters’ sapphic shocker of a novel Fingersmith, this Palme d’Or-nominated 2016 film is a treat.
Ha Jung-woo, Kim Tae-ri, Kim Min-hee and Cho Jin-woong in 'The Handmaiden'. Source: SBS / SBS On Demand
Like the Greenaway, Oldboy director Park’s delightfully duplicitous tale also involves books, boobs and brilliantly drawn double-crosses and is similarly driven by thieves who can’t quite keep the line between love, lust and mistrust straight.
Whereas Waters’ book was set in Victorian-era Britain, Park leaps forward in time and across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, guiding us instead to Korea under colonial Japanese rule in the 1930s. It’s here, in lashing rain, that we meet a magnetic Kim Tae-ri’s Sook-hee. She has been raised, Dickensian-like, by a light-fingered gang of women who have taught her to whip up forgeries, spot a fake coin or gem at a glance, con men out of their money and kidnap babies to sell at great profit.
An antihero at the very edges of morality, then, but one who is simply doing what it takes to survive in this brutal place where Japanese soldiers parade, brandishing their rapiers at dirty young kids ranging wild in the streets. What if she could work her way out of this mire while striking for communal revenge, too?
Who’s playing who?
It’s an enticing possibility that presents itself in the malevolently arrogant form of Ha Jung-woo’s debonaire crook Fujiwara. Having assumed the title Count by nefarious means, he insinuates his way into the home of hideous ‘noble’ man Uncle Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong).
The black-tongued, leather glove-favouring older man is a collaborator who has ingratiated himself with the invaders, siphoning off what little reliable electricity there is to light his astounding folly of a mansion, an architecture porn hub where Japanese design collides with the lofty British style of Waters’ original overlord.
Ha Jung-woo and Kim Min-hee. Source: SBS / SBS On Demand
Kouzuki is also a pornographer who forges rare Japanese erotica to sell to the horny suited men who gather in his snake statue-adorned library – subtle – who are inescapably stuck after hearing the breathy recitations of his sheltered niece, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee), who he also plans to marry (eew). Kouzuki devises diversely kinky ways to work up Hideko for their pleasure, including a life-size marionette, whippings and auto-erotic demonstrations. And just what, exactly, is lurking in his basement? (Hullo, icky call-back to a notoriously adored Park movie.)
Sook-hee arrives at this hothouse in the dead of night, after being ferried by car through radiantly sunny clifftop country. Assuming the name Tamako, she is to serve as handmaiden to Kouzuki’s niece, aiding Fujiwara in seducing her as collateral damage in his desire to seize control of Kouzuki’s insidious wealth.
Is this a win for the common man over a grossly indulgent bourgeoise of little moral standing, or a case of like minds meeting? A little of columns A and B.
Literary visitations
Embracing Alfred Hitchcock’s spin on Daphne du Maurier’s claustrophobically gothic novel Rebecca and the sexually-driven war games of Stephen Frears’ take on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ epistolary tome Dangerous Liaisons, everyone is at it in this three-act (fore)play in which each chapter strips off another layer of understanding.
Is Hideko as sheltered as she seems, having been cloistered in this house with her uncle since she was five years old, haunted by ghostly visions of her aunt’s unfortunate demise? Or does she have more agency than she’s letting on as Sook-hee proves to be a dab hand with a tooth-filing thimble primed for the orally fixated? Hideko welcomes her loyal handmaiden into her bed to teach her the ways of the world, and her richly appointed closet is cluttered with what appears to be sex toys, including a velvety rope.
As they fall harder into their forbidden embrace, with Min-hee and Tae-ri’s racy performances exhilarating, do the duelling men have any hope? Or will they be punished for doing so, damned by the curse of accused hysteria?
Kim min-hee and Kim Tae-ri in 'The Handmaiden'. Credit: Cannes Film Festival
“Each night in bed, I think about her assets,” another shared line repeated by alternate characters for maximum effect, is as delightfully daft as it is deliberately crass. However, it nonetheless has something to say about class, as do further revelations about Hideko’s hijacked childhood. Is this cheap titillation on Park’s part, or are the women playing the game harder than the men, upending patriarchal cages as they go?
As film critic and academic Dr Alexandra Heller-Nicholas puts it “Accusations of misogyny… have had little impact on [Park’s] desire to restrain his depiction of female sexuality, and while the sex scenes that punctuate The Handmaiden make no effort to disguise their lascivious intent… Beyond the eroticism that permeates the film like sticky lollipop gloss, Park too keeps a sharp eye on its colonial politics.”
This deliberately mischievous mix and each act’s limberly acrobatic flip ensures The Handmaiden keeps a tight grip on our attentions. Magnificent performances all round ensure our eye is pulled not just by their flesh, but also by their knotty intentions on what it takes to stay on top. Astounding production design by Ryu Seong-hie, Jo Sang-gyeong’s finger-gripped costumes and Chung-hoon Chung’s silken cinematography laced through by Cho Young-wuk’s aching score all combine to leave us wanting more.
The Handmaiden, one of SBS On Demand's most-watched films of 2024 (see what else was popular in the ), is streaming as part of SBS On Demand's .
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The Handmaiden
drama • romance • 2016
drama • romance • 2016
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