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The Handmaiden

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Hangul
  
아가씨

Produced by
  
Park Chan-wookSyd Lim

Director
  
Languages
  
Korean, Japanese

8.1/10
IMDb


Revised Romanization
  
Agassi

Initial release
  
25 August 2016 (Russia)

Featured song
  
The Tree from Mount Fuji

The Handmaiden t0gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcTrF2mGRl72HSQT3P

Screenplay by
  
Park Chan-wookChung Seo-kyung

Based on
  
Fingersmithby Sarah Waters

Starring
  
Kim Min-heeKim Tae-riHa Jung-wooCho Jin-woong

Awards
  
Blue Dragon Film Award for Best Leading Actress

Cast
  
Kim Min‑hee, Kim Tae‑ri, Ha Jung‑woo, Cho Jin‑woong, Moon So‑ri

Similar
  
Ha Jung-woo movies, Directed by Park Chan-wook, Thrillers

Profiles

The Handmaiden (Hangul아가씨; RR: Agassi; lit. "Lady") is a 2016 South Korean erotic psychological thriller film directed by Park Chan-wook and starring Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo and Cho Jin-woong. It is inspired from the novel Fingersmith by Welsh writer Sarah Waters, with the setting changed from Victorian era Britain to Korea under Japanese colonial rule.

Contents

The film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. It was released in South Korea on 1 June 2016, and received critical acclaim.

The handmaiden official trailer


Part 1

In Japanese-occupied Korea, a conman operating under the sobriquet of "Count Fujiwara" hires a pickpocket named Sook-Hee from a family of con artists to become the maid of the mysterious Japanese heiress Lady Hideko, whom Fujiwara plans to marry and to commit to an asylum in order to steal her inheritance. Sook-Hee, taking on the name "Tamako", enters Hideko's household, which is controlled by her authoritarian Uncle Kouzuki. Hideko is haunted by the suicide of her aunt, and claims to hear her voice at night. As Sook-Hee and Hideko spend more time together, they appear to get along well, Hideko allowing Sook-Hee to wear her dresses and jewelry. Hideko is also anxious about marrying Fujiwara, her feelings for him not very strong, but Sook-Hee makes passionate love to her, promising her the same pleasures with her new husband. Sook-Hee begins expressing reluctance about following through with the plan, unhappy over the feigned attraction Fujiwara has for Hideko. Hideko herself feels that she cannot go through with the marriage, but Sook-Hee insists she do so, causing Hideko to slap her and run away in frustration. Kouzuki leaves on business for a week, reminding Hideko to "not forget about the basement." Hideko and Fujiwara elope soon afterward and consummate their marriage, as indicated by a small blood stain on Hideko's sheets the following morning. After cashing out Hideko's inheritance, Sook-Hee, Hideko, and Fujiwara travel to the asylum, but Sook-Hee is taken away by the staff, having been told that she is in fact Hideko. After being left with one piece of jewelry by Hideko, Sook-Hee curses them as she is carried away.

Part 2

As a young child, Hideko is taught to read by her aunt, but any errors, mistakes, or any feelings of levity from either of them results in severe physical punishment from Kouzuki. Kouzuki houses a massive library of antique erotica, which he forces Hideko's aunt to read for aristocratic guests, which is then auctioned off to them. Unable to handle the abuse, Hideko's aunt hangs herself from a tree in their yard. However, Kouzuki takes Hideko into his basement, where he heavily implies he murdered her aunt after she had attempted to run away. As Hideko grows older, she reads the books in her aunt's place. She catches the eye of Fujiwara, who poses as an art forger that Kouzuki hires to replicate missing art from his books. He then meets with Hideko in private, offering her an escape from her abusive life. He informs her of his plan: find a poor, illiterate Korean girl to pose as her handmaiden that will blindly assist the two in marrying, and once they've claimed the inheritance, she will commit the handmaiden in Hideko's place and live under her identity.

Hideko is initially complicit in the plans, but finds her feelings for Sook-Hee growing over time. On the night Sook-Hee makes love to Hideko under the guise of strengthening her feelings for Fujiwara, the two become increasingly more intimate, realizing their true love for each other. Hideko breaks down and laments that she can't marry Fujiwara, though Sook-Hee tells her she must. Torn between her escape and her love for Sook-Hee, she attempts to hang herself from the same tree her aunt hung from, but is saved by Sook-Hee, who tearfully confesses her culpability in trying to commit Hideko and steal her inheritance, with Hideko admitting her plan to commit her in her place. The two vow to get revenge on both Kouzuki and Fujiwara, but not before going into Kouzuki's library and destroying every book in his possession before they leave for the marriage. On Hideko's wedding night, she cuts her hand on a knife and stains her own sheets, refusing to sleep with Fujiwara.

Part 3

Over dinner, Fujiwara fantasizes over his wealth and new life with Hideko. Meanwhile, Sook-Hee manages to escape the asylum by picking the lock to her brace using the hairpin Bok-soon (caretaker of the con-artist family) gave her and rescued by Bok-soon under the cover of a small fire. That night, at a hotel, Fujiwara attempts to force himself onto Hideko, but Hideko manages to knock him out with a strong opiate he gave her as a means of painless suicide were their plan to fail. Sook-Hee and Hideko reunite at the hotel and leave immediately, enlisting her con artist family to forge passports and leave the country with Hideko, despite Kouzuki's efforts to keep them in the country through his influence.

Kouzuki eventually finds Fujiwara and brings him back to his estate, torturing Fujiwara in his cellar with his collection of antique bookmaking tools and presses him for sexual details about his niece, which a disgusted Fujiwara refuses to give him. He then tricks Kouzuki into lighting him several cigarettes laced with mercury, the toxic gas within the smoke killing them both. On a ferry to Shanghai, China, Sook-Hee and Hideko celebrate their newfound freedom by making love once again.

Cast

  • Kim Min-hee as Lady Izumi Hideko
  • Kim Tae-ri as Sook-hee
  • Ha Jung-woo as Count Fujiwara
  • Cho Jin-woong as Uncle Kouzuki
  • Kim Hae-sook as Butler madame Sasaki
  • Moon So-ri as Hideko's aunt
  • Production

    The film began production in mid 2015 and completed on October 31, 2015.

    Release

    The Handmaiden premiered in competition at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where Ryu Seong-hee won the Vulcan Award of the Technical Artist for her art direction work on the film. The film was also screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, where The Playlist named it as one of the 15 best films of the festival. In South Korea, the film was released on June 1, 2016 and sold more than 4,288,255 tickets.

    In the United States, the distribution of the film was handled by Amazon Studios and Magnolia Pictures. The film opened in limited release across five theaters in New York City and Los Angeles, and played in 140 additional theaters in the following weeks. It was released on DVD in the US on January 24, 2017 and Blu-ray on March 28, 2017.

    Critical response

    The Handmaiden has been met with critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 94%, based on 134 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Handmaiden uses a Victorian crime novel as the loose inspiration for another visually sumptuous and absorbingly idiosyncratic outing from director Park Chan-wook." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 84 out of 100, based on 38 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

    Top ten lists

    The Handmaiden was listed on numerous critics' top ten lists.

    References

    The Handmaiden Wikipedia