The celebrated South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook manages to pack a lot of detail into the entire 2 1/2 hours of the erotic and exotic drama of his latest stunning epic The Handmaiden. Park has adapted Sarah Walter’s historical crime novel Fingersmith which was set in Victorian Britain, and transposed to Japanese occupied Korea in the 1930’s. It’s an enormous leap, but essentially as the story is about a society that is run on a set of codes, both criminal and social, the transition works well and it gives Park a vehicle to which he can even more layers of intrigue and deception than in Walter’s original work.
The story has an outrageous amount of double, and even triple twists, that it demands a great more attention than normal of its audience. Just when you think you have comprehended what is going down, there is another enormous volte-face to set your thought-process working overtime just trying to keep up.
It all starts with Sookee a young tearful Korean girl being forced to hand over her baby before undertaking a very long journey to a rather remote mysterious mansion. The Master of the house is a wealthy elderly recluse with a passion for old books, and Sookee is to be the maid for Lady Hideko his fragile and highly-strung ward, who he expects to marry one day. He is however not the only who has an eye on her hand (and her fortune) as she is being courted by the handsome young Count Fujiwara.
We soon discover in a series of flashbacks that the baby was not Sookee’s (who’s real name is either Tamoko and/or Okju), and she not a maid but in fact an experienced thief and fraudster, who has been placed in the household as a spy to help the cause of Fujiwara who is not a nobleman at all, but Sookee’s criminal accomplice. Then as the story progresses more, we find out that is not exactly the truth either and this enthralling and provocative tale of deceit starts to shed a few more lies.
Park’s movie is split into three parts with the first being narrated by Sookee as she relates it all from her viewpoint. Part two is essentially the same story but this time it is told by Lady Hideko as she sees it all. When it comes to the final part, the focus shifts to Fujiwara, and Park not only opts to add more revelations and reversals, but he also hots up the sexual depravity, which greatly contributes to the fact that The Handmaiden is being hyped as the sexiest movie of the year.
It is unquestionably one of most considered and well-structured movies to hit our screens this year, and with it’s sensory overload you cannot fail to be reeling with a little giddiness once the final credit roles. It is simply so superb that it demands to be seen more than once.
