Grade: A
Recommendation: Seeeeee it!
Verdict: “The Handmaiden” is gorgeous and surprising, expertly filling its two and half hour run time.
Park Chan-Wook’s “The Handmaiden” is a doozy of a movie, in the best of ways. Leaving the theater I was a little disoriented, spinning through feelings and flashes of colors and nipples. Obviously this is a good thing. I’m content to say I really enjoyed “The Handmaiden,” and not even just for all the oral sex!
It’s a love story, a far cry from the South Korean director’s previous work. He’s perhaps best known for the bloody, unsettling “Oldboy,” which drew enough attention to warrant a 2013 U.S. remake with Josh Brolin. Based on the trailer, I had expected something tonally closer to his film “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance,” a revenge thriller with a lot of black humor and delirium. But “Handmaiden” is more tempered and more evenly paced, though still packed with humor and delights.
“Handmaiden” follows Sookee (Kim Tae-Ri), a handmaiden for the Japanese heiress Lady Hideko (Kim Min-Hee) under Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo). But Fujiwara isn’t really a count and Sookee isn’t really a handmaiden; they’re working together to scam Lady Hideko out of her inheritance so that Sookee can escape her life as a pickpocket and Fujiwara can drink fancy wines. Complicating this scheme is Hideko’s uncle Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong), who raised Hideko with the intent of marrying her for her money. As part of her hyper-sexual upbringing, he trained her to read porn to sweaty rich guys, a task so cripplingly disgusting that her aunt killed herself to escape it.
Of course, as in any good mystery, none of this goes according to anyone’s original plans. The movie is nearly two and half hours long but the time flies, propelled by all the secrets and intrigue. Hideko and Sookee’s relationship takes a turn (perhaps expectedly, considering how flipping gorgeous Kim Min-Hee is) and we suddenly launch into a glorious tale of female liberation.
The film is based on the Victorian Romance novel “Fingersmith” by Sarah Waters, which to me emphasizes the importance of the female triumph as a jab at antiquated British uppityness.
So yeah, there’s a lot at play here: scheming and sadism and shifting alliances every which way, all enveloped in the richness of cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon’s beautiful frame. Easily the most delightful thing about this film is all the sumptuous imagery.
All the sexual tension feels even headier in this light; Sookee’s staring at Hideko with her blushing lil’ baby face, Hideko’s staring back with her striking red lips, the porn-watchers lick their lips. And hot diggity, it’s effective.
Ladies, I don’t care how straight you think you are, seeing Sookee rub down Hideko’s tooth with a thimble will have you questioning your life choices. And that’s before we get to the really explicit parts. Definitely NSFW.
This naturally takes us to a question of excess. It’s important to question the justification of all this explicit lesbian sex. Does “Handmaiden” take it too far? Are we objectifying women by showing their sex in such detail? Can we call this porn?
I think the answer lies in their love. The New York Times reviewer Manohla Dargis tackles this issue in detail in her article about the sex in “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” though the sex in that movie is WAY more graphic. Basically it comes down to the portrayal of these women as human women.
Yes, it’s morally okay to enjoy the sex scenes, so don’t fret. You’ll be too wrapped up in everything else to obsess about it anyway. “The Handmaiden” is a whole mess of fun, worth all the money in your pockets, so go spend it at a theater quick.
