Loosely based on the 2002 English novel “Fingersmith,” “The Handmaiden” begins in colonial Korea, where a young woman named Tamako ( Kim Tae-ri ) arrives to the marvellous home of wealthy book collector Kouzuki ( Cho Jin-woong ). She comes here to work as a maid of extraordinarily beautiful and sheltered Lady Hideko ( Kim Min-hee ), niece of Kouzuki’s late wife. Hideko tells her that she can do anything except lying to her. Tamako is actually named Sookee—master pickpocket, expert appraiser of stolen goods, protégée of the Fagin-like figure ( Lee Yong-nyeo ) who raised the girl after her mother was hanged. Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo), a con man scheming to marry her, who instructs Hideko in art, wants to steal her fortune and have her submitted in an asylum. Her uncle, a pervert and Japanophile, is intending to do much the same thing. Count hires Sookee to get the job done. The count was fake, originally raised by Korean fisherman but claims to be Japanese and calls himself Fujiwara. He says “Frankly, I’m not that interested in money itself. What I desire is—how shall I put it?—the manner of ordering wine without looking at the price.”
The plan is complicated, but it gets awkward when Sookee/Tamako starts falling in love with Hideko. When uncle Kozuki leaves on business for a week, Hideko and Fujiwara elope. After stealing Hideko’s inheritance, Sookee, Hideko, and Fujiwara travel to the asylum, where Hideko and Fujiwara pass Sookee off as the “Countess”. Any further details will ruin the film experience for the audiences. In this film, everyone lies to everyone and things start to get more complicated as the story progresses. Nothing is what it seems in this movie, and the things that aren’t what they seem aren’t quite what they don’t seem to be. Most of the film takes place in and around the book collector’s country estate, a masterful creation which is one of the best mansions in film history.
It seems to change size and shape depending on a visitor’s angle of approach. After a few more scenes, you realize that you only saw a part of the house. There are secret doors and hidden passageways that only certain characters know about, leading to places where they can make love. One of many show-stopping setpieces is a reading of perverse erotica from the library, accompanied by one of the weirdest sex shows in mainstream cinema. Powerful cross-cut sequences feel like self-contained short stories of their own. “The Handmaiden” is neatly divided into three parts, each approximately 45 minutes long, each narrated by a different major character with incidental mini-narratives embedded within each one.
debarshithecinemaniac 