“When she saw me turn to her she reached and took my hand. She took it, not to be led by me, not to be comforted; only to hold it, because it was mine.”
The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook
Park Chan-wook interviewed by Mouloud Achour for Le Gros Journal:
- “Many compared you to Quentin Tarantino because of the violence in your movies, but I prefer comparing you to Stanley Kubrick, because you always tackle issues of modernity, present and future times, and you explore the themes of domination by the rich and violence of the poor.
- Your remark is very interesting. On the set of Stoker in the United States, Nicole Kidman made a similar comment. She said that I was often compared to Hitchcock, but that she would see more resemblance between me and Stanley Kubrick.”
“My savior who came to ruin my life. My Tamako, my Sookee.“
The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-Wook
This might not be the most useful review of The Handmaiden. Because this review is informed by the experience of a person who did not have an inaccurate idea of what The Handmaiden would be, but a distinctly incomplete one. Also I watched it in a very small theater with three very elderly couples, and have no way of knowing exactly how much impact those…interesting circumstances had.
Here is everything I knew going in: The Handmaiden is the newest film from Park Chan-Wook, adapted from a novel called Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters. The pun of the title has been maintained, bless, but the setting has been rather brilliantly transposed from Victorian Britain to 1930s Korea, when the country was under Japanese rule. The cinematography is by frequent Park collaborator Chung Chung-Hoon, who was the DP for Stoker. Stoker was actually the only Park Chan-Wook movie I had seen; this would become relevant while watching The Handmaiden. And finally: Harold, they’re lesbians.
India is so central to Stoker that her heightened, layered perception of the world is what crafts the texture of the movie itself. The editing flickers like thoughts in places, bleeding across time and space, like when India tips a hanging lamp in the basement to swing across her path, and the beam of light is thrown on the faces of her mother and uncle above in the kitchen just moments before. We see and hear the way India does, and India, bless her, is morbid as hell.
The Handmaiden (2016) 2nd Official Trailer - Led by Ha Jung-woo, Kim Min-hee, Jo Jin-woong , and Kim Tae-ri, The Handmaiden follows a young Korean female pickpocket from the slums who is hired by a charming con man to join an elaborate scam. She becomes the personal servant of a wealthy Japanese heiress and seduces her.
YOOOOOOO