The Handmaiden: The Scheme, the Sensual, and the Sapphic
Written by Alexa Citra
The Handmaiden (아가씨, 2016) is the tenth feature film by the South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, who is highly celebrated for his visceral Vengeance Trilogy featuring the Grand Prix-winning incestuous revenge neo-noir classic Oldboy (2003). The acclaimed auteur reworks Sarah Waters’ sapphic Victorian heist novel Fingersmith to create The Handmaiden, a romantic revenge thriller and psychological horror set in Japanese-occupied Korea of the 1930s. Rich with twists and triple-crosses, the story follows orphaned female pickpocket Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) through an intricate scheme with conman Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) to claim the fortune of Japanese heiress Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee). In the process of attempting to help Fujiwara seduce Hideko, however, Sook-hee falls for her, a point at which the three-part tale of love, ambition, and deception truly unfurls.
Park imbues the film with layered meanings through masterful characterization woven into an intricate web of mise-en-scène, dialogue, and imagery, among other devices. Through his transposition of Fingersmith to a Korea under Japanese rule, Park delves into the power complexities and deep-rooted abrasions that ensued at the time and that continue to roil long after the end of the annexation. Hideko’s position as a seemingly emotionally fragile damsel in a gilded cage, for instance, is a statement on the complex histories of both nations and, simultaneously, queer and female identities, made through a postcolonial lens (Shin 195). Sook-hee and Fujiwara conspire with and against each other in pursuit of survival and social ascension, which are prevalent themes in postcolonial historical commentary. This ensemble of characters is then brought to life by a gifted cast, with a most notable performance by Kim Min-hee, who portrays the multidimensional Hideko as she transforms from the symbol of naïveté to a deceitful mastermind and elevates the visual potency of the film with her charms.
The complex histories of both nations are further portrayed by Uncle Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong), a Korean collaborator and main antagonist of the story who, despite his perverse obsession with Japanese culture, abuses his power over his Japanese niece Hideko as a twisted act of pride. In a 2016 interview with Film Comment, Park mentioned the pejorative term 사대주의 (sadaejuui; “serving-the-Great ideology”), which refers to the notion where “people of a smaller nation are so drawn to the power of a larger nation, and become subservient to that power” (Topalovic). This complex is internalized to the point where they worship their subjugator voluntarily instead of by force, which Kouzuki represents. In the film, his contempt for other Koreans is nullified by his blind valorization of the Japanese when he treats the swindler without an ounce of suspicion simply because he assumes the identity of Fujiwara, a Japanese aristocrat. Characters like Kouzuki are pitiable but pose “a big threat and a serious danger for the other people of their nation” (Topalovic). This personality of mimicry and indefinite allegiances is a product of the fraught and ambivalent relationship between the colonizer and the colonized (Shin 196), bringing to the forefront the shifting and intermingling of colonial identities.
Diving deeper into The Handmaiden as not only a postcolonial but also a feminist text, we examine its Sapphic romance and eroticism as a transnational criticism of patriarchal codes. Park goes so far as to set the film apart from the rest of his oeuvre as it is about “two women who find love and form a bond of solidarity” against their male oppressors (Topalovic). In a 2017 Guardian interview, Waters argues against the understandable criticism The Handmaiden has faced for its explicit sex scenes that supposedly pander to the male gaze: “Fingersmith was about finding space for women to be with each other away from prying eyes. Though ironically the film is a story told by a man, it’s still very faithful to the idea that the women are appropriating a very male pornographic tradition to find their own way of exploring their desires” (Armitstead).
Sook-hee and Hideko may be two women who are “trapped within the limits of male-authored text,” but the fact remains that The Handmaiden portrays them freeing themselves from these male structures or using them “for their own pleasure” (Waters). What is so liberating about The Handmaiden’s enactment of erotica is not the consummation itself, but rather appropriation (Bae 184). The women’s awareness of this in the face of patriarchal oppression lies at the core of their subversion. Thus, Sook-hee and Hideko demonstrate advancement in “contemporary imaginings and understandings of the colonial era” through acts of appropriation (Bae 185). More than a reflection on power and eroticism, The Handmaiden is a modern magnum opus that brings conversations on queer desire and female autonomy further into the global cinematic landscape.
Beyond the incisive social commentary, The Handmaiden offers some of the most beautifully-executed mise-en-scène contemporary cinema has to offer. The story is set in Kouzuki’s part-Japanese, part-English gothic country estate, an architectural amalgamation that is emblematic of the mansion’s inhabitants, who exist in between two extremities, two worlds. Park joins hands with Ryu Seong-hie, who is responsible for the film’s brilliant production design. The mansion as a vital space and storytelling element augments the contrast between the characters, from Hideko’s bedroom in the western wing and Sookie’s oshiire (“linen closet”) in the Japanese wing to the labyrinthine scenery of the garden versus the crushing suffocation of Kouzuki’s basement.
Moreover, the detailed costumes augment the cinematographic and narrative architecture of the film. Designed by Jo Sang-gyeong, Japanese traditional attire and romantic English wear meet and are imbued with symbolic meaning, serving as subplots. In the film, Sook-hee muses at the feel of Hideko’s feminine finery: “Ladies truly are the dolls of maids. All these buttons are for my amusement”. The gloves in particular play an integral role in the sartorial symbolism in The Handmaiden. Aside from their value as a social marker in Victorian society, gloves are both an “empowering and enslaving device” (Barangé, et al.) that can serve as expressions of underlying emotions, truths, and intimacies. Lady Hideko’s relationship with gloves symbolizes her duality as a character and the multiplicity of her part in the con (Ng 1:20). She is always seen wearing a pair of gloves when performing, and the only scenes in which she does not wear them are her moments of vulnerability and liberation with Sook-hee. As a narrative and thematic device, gloves heighten the sensuality and emotional intimacy portrayed in The Handmaiden.
Just as an act of creation is an act of destruction, The Handmaiden is a testament to destruction as a form of creation. The tension brimming throughout the story culminates in Sook-hee’s cathartic wrecking of Kouzuki’s collection of erotica that torments Hideko, who is a survivor of his sexual abuse. The depiction of blood and ropes in the film also exemplifies the notion of creative destruction as Sook-hee and Hideko transform the meanings of those elements from one of defeat and self-ruination to one of abundance and freedom. All in all, the puzzle of The Handmaiden cannot be fully pieced together with a single watch, its ever-shifting messages and shrouded details complex and tantalizing despite the film’s extremity that some might find gruesome.
Through the intensity and convolution of The Handmaiden, Park presents emphatic social commentary beneath layered irony and visual sensibility. The preservation and betrayal of trust, the double-edged sword that is intimacy, and the triple-crosses and identity shifts that illuminate the duplicity and multiplicity of human nature are but a few concepts central to the tale. It is undeniable that The Handmaiden deserves to be celebrated for its stirring appeal to our pathos and ethos, and its shortcomings can serve to inspire visions on moving forward as we continue to address and dismantle oppressive systems. The Handmaiden is many things – a fusion of genres, a dissection of colonial modernity, a sumptuous queer fantasia – but at its core, it is a gutting story of sensitivity, authenticity, and humanity in the face of oppression.
Works cited:
Armitstead, Claire. “Sarah Waters: ‘The Handmaiden turns pornography into a spectacle – but it’s true to my novel.’” The Guardian, 2017. Accessed June 10, 2021.
Bae, Keungyoon. “Admitting an Attraction: Colonial Villainy, Visuality, and The Handmaiden (2016) as Critique.” International Journal of Korean History, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 175-187, 2020.
Barangé, Jeanne, et al. “Gloves and the Victorians: They Go Hand in Hand.” Myths and Icons in Victorian Britain, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, 2019.
Hu, Jasmine. “Symmetry, Violence, and The Handmaiden's Queer Colonial Intimacies.” Camera Obscura, Duke University Press, 2021.
Ng, Natalie. “The Handmaiden: Why Costume Design is Important.” Filmed in Ether, 2017.
Rhee, Suk Koo. “The Erotic-Grotesque versus Female Agency in Colonial Korea in Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden.” Revue Canadienne d’Études Cinématographiques, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 115–38, University of Toronto Press, 2020.
Shin, Chi-Yun. “In Another Time and Place: Translating Gothic Romance in The Handmaiden.” Remaking, Translating: Dialogues Across Borders, Intercultural Screen Adaptation: British and Global Case Studies, Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
The Handmaiden (Ahgassi 아가씨). Directed by Park Chan-wook, Moho Film, 2016.
Tolentino, Jia. “The Handmaiden and the Freedom Women Find Only with One Another.” The New Yorker, 2016. Accessed June 12, 2021.
Topalovic, Goran. “Interview: Park Chan-wook.” Film Comment, 2016.