At first glance, Park Chan-Wook’s film, ‘inspired’ by Sarah Waters’s Victorian set novel Fingersmith (Waters and Chan-Wook agreed on ‘inspired’ rather than adapted because of the changes in the second half of the film) is an unusual choice. Looking more closely at his previous work however, it’s a snug fit, with its ghosts, languid eroticism and pain/pleasurer thresholds to cross within the poly perverse imagined universe of the Libertine.
Waters’ novel tells the tale of a girl from a London hovel who becomes an expert ‘fingersmith’ (pickpocket) and is drawn into a double/triple cross with a faux gentleman conman with ideas above his station. The reimagining by Chan-Wook and his co-screenwriter Chung Seo-kyung moves the locale to 1930s Asia, particularly Japanese occupied Korea, where Sookee is the orphaned daughter of infamous female thief. She lives with her adoptive mother (who deals in stolen goods), an adoptive brother who makes forgeries, and an adoptive sister who is also a fingersmith. A suave louche crook who calls himself The Count entices Sookee to take part in his latest plot, a bid to con a rich heiress of her fortune.
At first glance, Park Chan-Wook’s film, ‘inspired’ by Sarah Waters’s Victorian set novel Fingersmith is an unusual choice. Looking more closely at his previous work however, it’s a snug fit […]
Like the novel, the film is told in three parts each from different perspectives. The second half of the story is vastly different to the Waters novel which has many more twists and turns. The first segment takes great pleasure in pulling you in different directions. At first we think that Sookee is to be the concubine of the old man of the house and Uncle to the heiress, but no she is to be The Handmaiden of the title to the rich orphan Hideko.
The plan is for The Count, with the help of Sookee, to seduce Hideko and then place her in a lunatic asylum then abscond with her riches. But best laid plans of mice and men and all that… Of course the two women fall for each other and set on the road the twists and turns of cross, double and triple cross.
There are a couple of set pieces that are trademark Park Chan-Wook: the Uncle is a collector of pornography which he has his niece Hideko read aloud to his friends, and a torture scene near the end that is brutally restrained in its willful satisfaction.
Very rarely does [the film]conjure up anything like the magic we have seen before from the masterful Park Chan-Wook.
The picture looks like a dream, with an amalgamation of dank Victorian interiors juxtaposed with the lightness of classic Japanese sets. Cinematography is also above par what with browns and dull yellows enveloped with a misty fog.
While enjoyable, The Handmaiden seems very much a minor film in Park Chan-Wook’s canon of work and he develops neither character from generic identikits and the film gives a whiff of been there done that. I’m sure the film will have its supporters but it feels to linger not beyond the sum of its parts. Very rarely does it conjure up anything like the magic we have seen before from the masterful Park Chan-Wook.
While enjoyable, The Handmaiden seems very much a minor film in Park Chan-Wook’s canon of work and he develops neither character from generic identikits and the film gives a whiff of been there done that.
