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Sharp, smart and sexy at every turn, Park Chan-Wook's "The Handmaiden" is a deliciously nasty con-artist thriller.
Park, the Korean director best known for the trippy revenge thriller "Oldboy," has adapted Sarah Waters' novel "Fingersmith," moving the action from Victorian England to Japanese-occupied Korea of the 1930s. It starts with Sookee (Kim Tae-ri), an innocent young servant taking a new job tending to Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee), the fragile Japanese niece of a wealthy Korean book collector, Kuozuki (Cho Jin-woong).
But there's more to Sookee than meets the eye. Soon we're told that she is actually a trained thief and con artist who has teamed up with a veteran con man (Ha Jung-woo), who calls himself The Count. Sookee is integral to The Count's plot to seduce Hideko, marry her out from under Kuozuki's nose, take her fortune and drive her straight to the loony bin.
Inside Kuozuki's opulent house — half English mansion, half Japanese courtyard — Sookee learns many secrets. The biggest is that Kuozuki's book collection is heavy on rare erotica, which he forces Hideko to read aloud for the entertainment of his gentlemen guests and clients. Sookee also learns that the readings leave Hideko primed for sexual manipulation, and soon a highly charged affair ensues between the women.
At a certain point, Park pulls the rug out from under Sookee, and the audience, by re-creating the same events from Hideko's perspective. It's the first of many twists that will leave viewers breathless before the end of this pulse-quickening drama.
Some of the tension comes from Park's visuals, creating the creepy atmospherics of a haunted house movie with fluid camerawork and the intriguing juxtaposition of English and Japanese styles. In the explicit sex scenes between Hideko and Sookee, Park's camera is placed quite creatively to create tasteful yet electrifying moments of ecstasy.
"The Handmaiden" has an overlay of politics, with a bit of feminism, class division and the pre-World War II tensions between native Koreans and invading Japanese. But those serious topics lie lightly on what turns out to be a fascinating tale of deception and double-crosses.
Twitter: @moviecricket
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'The Handmaiden'
A rich Japanese woman gets a young Korean servant in a luscious Korean thriller where nothing is what it appears.
Where • Broadway Centre Cinemas.
When • Opens Friday, Nov. 18
Rating • Not rated, but probably NC-17 for explicit sex scenes.
Running time • 147 minutes; in Korean and Japanese, with subtitles.