A beautiful, perverse, absorbing film. I have noticed on other occasions that many of the Korean films refuse easy categorizations. This is also the case of ‘The Handmaiden‘, the film made in 2016 by Chan-wook Park. It is a mature film, a film that starts from an English horror-Gothic style novel, moves the action in Korea occupied by Japan in the 30s of the last century, and develops into a synthesis of psychological and erotic thrillers with family saga and social cinema with a strong feminist touch. The personal imprint is very visible, the director that ‘Oldboy‘ made famous in the world manages once again to tell fluently and with a unique visual perfection a Tarantino style story that takes place in a Japanese Hitchcock setting. I think there will be viewers who are bothered by one or the other of the details and scenes in the film, but I don’t think many can escape the magnetic charm of the story put on screen by this Korean master. Yes, master. I think that with this film, Chan-wook Park earned – at least for me – the title of master of the art of film.
The film has four characters moving in a world that feels like a kind of historical pulp fiction, probably a retrospective satire of the Japanization of the Korean high and ascending classes that happened during the colonial period in the early 20th century. They all imitate Japanese behaviour, take Japanese names, aspire to become or at least look Japanese, which was probably the sign and appearance of the social rise of the period. Kouzuki (Jin-woong Cho), a rich old man, owner of a villa whose architecture mixes Victorian and Japanese styles and collector of an impressive library of precious books and lithographs, raises (severely, not to say cruelly) and educates Hideko (Min-hee Kim) the daughter of his late wife’s sister who committed suicide years ago. Does he intent to marry her or does he just use her as a refined object of pleasure for the erotic readings served to his male friends? Hideko has a beautiful dowry, which he tries to get his hands on, same as do the young artist who introduces himself as Count Fujiwara (Jung-woo Ha) and the maid Sook-Hee (Tae-ri Kim), in fact a clever pickpocket who becomes the pivot of a chain of intrigues worthy of a saga of a fallen family, with many hundreds of pages devoured by readers. The plans will change several times, same as the viewer’s perspective throughout the film, which is divided into three approximately equal in time parts, in which the story is told and repeated from different points of view.
The narrative technique of alternative perspectives has already been used in the world cinema, including that of the Far East, by master Kurosawa for example. Here it seems to me that a new dimension is being added, because the two storytellers are the young Sook-Hee and Hideko whose connection is constantly evolving and oscillating between a master-maid relationship, solidarity facilitated by the shared destinies of traumatic childhoods marked by the deaths of the mothers, complicity , enmity, rivalry and love. It’s one of the most beautiful stories of its kind I’ve seen on screens lately, and Chan-wook Park demonstrates his mastery of psychological characterization, as well as his ability to transform shocking details of violence and sex into functional elements of action. All four acting performances are perfect. Visually, the film is a delight, at no time is the camera neutral, the most interesting and unusual angles serve the story and each frame is studied and staged with the aesthetic refinement of the Japanese prints. Viewers who a priori reject movies that are too violent or which contain too explicit scenes will probably avoid this film anyway. For those who will see it, however, it will be difficult, I think, not to fall under the spell.