The Handmaiden (2016)
Directed by Park Chan-wook
1930s Korea, in the period of Japanese occupation, a new girl, Sook-hee, is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress, Hideko, who lives a secluded life on a large countryside estate with her domineering Uncle Kouzuki. But the maid has a secret. She is a pickpocket recruited by a swindler posing as a Japanese Count to help him seduce the Lady to steal her fortune.
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You may be reminded of Gothic romances like “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca,” or the Euro-noir manipulations of “Diabolique” and “Gaslight.”
This time his touchstone of choice is Rebecca, Hitchcock’s foray into lesbian Gothic psychodrama that earned him his only Best Picture Oscar in 1940.
The house in which this labyrinthine psychodrama plays out is a strange and mysterious hybrid, part western gothic mansion (there are shades of both The Haunting and Rebecca in its shadowy facade), part palatial Japanese residence.
That’s the setup and it’s straightforward enough — there’s even a creepy housekeeper (Kim Hae Sook) right out of “Rebecca.”
The plot faintly evokes many Gothic thrillers (chiefly "Rebecca," "Jane Eyre" and "Gaslight") and quite a few examples of film noir as well; Park’s source is Sarah Waters ’ Fingersmith, a 2002 novel set in Dickensian England that was previously made as a 2005 British miniseries.
With shades of “All About Eve” and more than a dash of “Rebecca,” Sookee arrives at the impressive manor, and while never forgetting her status as double agent, begins to fall for her beautiful employer, the Count’s mark Hideko (Kim Min-hee).
Its intertwining schemes and bungled cons recall Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder; its first half, with a brooding lower class heroine shipping off to a country manor has shades of Jane Eyre.
“The Handmaiden” is a visually voluptuous addition to Park’s oeuvre—a fable of deception and imposture that bears comparison to Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” even if it doesn’t quite match it.
As the common Sook-hee is ushered into this magnificent colonial estate, her bewildered exploration of the Gothic mise-en-scène echoes the mysterious atmospherics of Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak.”
Its rich textures recall Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” and Lady Hideko’s mansion — equal parts English country manor and traditional Japanese villa — is a character in itself.
The look of the film is absolutely exquisite as well with production designer Seong-hie Ryu contributing what is easily the most memorable movie mansion to hit the big screen since “Crimson Peak” and cinematographer and frequent collaborator Chung-hoon Chung given the whole enterprise a dreamy look that effortlessly encompasses all the notes that the film hits, from the searing drama to the intense erotic heat to squirm-inducing horrors that need to be seen to be believed.
Most of the story takes place in and around the book collector’s country estate, a splendidly realized creation that’s not just one of the great mansions in film history—rivaled in recent movies only by the estate in another modern Gothic romance, “ Crimson Peak ”—but also an organizing metaphor for the whole film.
The film starts off with a setup familiar in Gothic fiction, from “Jane Eyre” to “Crimson Peak.”
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Taking a page from the classic 1950 Japanese film “Rashomon,” in which a lone event is retold from different points of view, “Handmaiden” shifts perspectives to keep us guessing.
Like "Rashomon" told by Quentin Tarantino, "The Handmaiden" is a three-part story revealed through alternating, very unreliable narrators.
To compare him to an American contemporary in David Fincher, if the violent cult hit Oldboy was Park's Fight Club, then The Handmaiden is his Gone Girl – less raw, more elegant and all the more subversive for its (comparatively) restrained approach.
Their erotic chemistry is, thankfully, both funny and real, so potent that they may well wipe out Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon in The Hunger for cinematic glamorous lipstick lesbianism.
In 2013, he made his English language debut with Stoker, a chilly, Gothic riff on Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt.
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You may be reminded of Gothic romances like “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca,” or the Euro-noir manipulations of “Diabolique” and “Gaslight.”
Dabbling in the sadomasochism of Takashi Ishii’s “Flower and Snake” series with a touch of Teruo Ishii’s grotesque “porno jidaigeki” — 1970s sexploitation costume dramas — these scenes offer their share of prurient pleasure, yet moves the narrative further away from delicate affairs of the heart.