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9/10
FilmFascination Rating
The Handmaiden is filled with so many twists that it will make you forget how good the previous one was!
The movie begins with Sook-hee weepily bidding farewell to her family as she leaves her household to work for a wealthy heiress, Lady Hideko, a mesmerizing beauty, who lives with her tyrannical uncle who has never allowed her to leave the grounds of their luxurious mansion. But ahead of the story, we are given the fact that Sook-hee isn’t actually a handmaiden and is a pickpocket, a profession inherited from her family, who has come to fool Hideko into looting her money. What’s the plan?
Seduce Hideko into marrying a con man and Sook-hee’s partner in crime, Count Fujiwara. Declare Hideko insane and put her into an asylum for mad people and inherit her money. The sad farewell that we were shown in the beginning, wasn’t actually a farewell but a cry of jealousy from her sisters who wish they were in her place to get the wealth from the heiress. This is just one of Park Chan-wook’s misdirections that he thoroughly enjoys throughout the film. And without saying it is understood that Sook-hee’s simple plan does not go as intended. I am going to constrain myself from saying anything more about the scenes or the plot of the movie.
The movie is divided into 3 parts. Each revealing itself petal by petal. Interestingly each part shows the same linear story with a completely different perspective and a new context. Revealing some facts that just change everything. A movie can be highly manipulative depending on what it shows to its audience. And Park Chan-wook surely uses this to his advantage. One of the very joys of watching this movie is the delight of realising how we were getting fooled into thinking in only one direction. To think of it, we were always given a little taste of the twists that the movie has up their sleeves but during the initial viewing, our perspective always made us blind towards them.
There is absolutely no hiding in the eroticism of the movie. The sexual tension in a scene where Sook-hee is filing one of Hideko’s teeth is so addictive and mesmerizing that you just cannot look away. The movie gets sexy, erotic, outrageous but perhaps a little bit too much. That might be because I watched the extended cut of the movie but there is a point where I thought, it could have worked if this sex scene was removed. But I would agree to the fact that it is a part of the entire environment the movie tries to create. Even though it might give the viewer a feeling that the film is getting carried away in the wrong direction, the film never loses track of its true essence.
There is no denying the boldness that the movie shows. But it is needed to make us feel the sensualness. The film takes utmost pleasure in showing an inherent feeling we all might have and that too without shying away. We just need to accept it, if we want to enjoy it. Great Movies have always been the risky ones. If you try to please everyone you have fucked up even before you have started. Sometimes you must take the step and ‘The Handmaiden’ takes that leap all so ambitiously to truly give what it wants to.
Initially, the characters of the movie are simple and entirely what they seem. We know their intentions, their innocence, and their history that moulded them into what they have become. But from the very moment the film gives us the first twist, it makes us scratch our heads into thinking who exactly is naïve and foolish. Soon enough, the movie teaches us to not trust everything we see. There is love, imprisonment, cunningness, freedom and it so deceiving.
Above all, it gives an experience of a cinematic journey. And have I mentioned how beautiful the movie is? The scenes of the movie where it takes the viewer to this lavish house are so well shot that they completely immerse you into it from the very beginning when Sook-hee enters it. The polished wooden walls, the lush green garden, the gorgeous cherry blossom tree, and the luxury – it is gorgeously striking. In the end, it just gives you such a good geographical structure of the entire area we are breathing in throughout the movie. May I even talk about how good the wardrobe is? You’ll notice that from the poster itself.
The handmaiden’s perfection in its precision is what makes it hold itself. And it is very delicate in that sense. Even if the tiniest of the things were changed it would fall apart like a virus infecting it. I don’t know how but somehow it doesn’t and this type of perfection for this amount of ambition is really hard to see nowadays.
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