THE HANDMAIDEN/ AH- GA- SSI
Korea, 2016, 140 minutes, Colour.
Min-hee Kim, Kim Tae-ri, Jang-woo Ha.
Directed by Chan-wook Park.
In recent years there have been a number of Korean films set in the 1920s and 1930s, the period of Japanese occupation and colonialism: The Last Princess, Age of Shadows. These films have been political but The Handmaiden goes in another direction, a Japanese woman under the care of a Korean “uncle� and her being exploited by a fake Korean Count.
The film has many aspects of a dramatic thriller as well as some explicit scenes of erotica.
The development of the screenplay is tantalising, being divided into three parts. In the first we are introduced to the situation, especially through the character of a young woman, a petty thief who lives in a community of thieves and is groomed for further criminal deception. She is employed by the Count to be the handmaiden of the Japanese woman, getting into her confidence, urging her to marry the Count. The Japanese woman is very withdrawn, subject to fear, seemingly innocent in the ways of sexuality.
In the second part there is more than a dramatic twist, looking at the same episodes but further developing them from the point of view of the Japanese woman. Seeing matters from her perspective, we also get a different perspective on the young woman as well as the Count.
And then there is a third part, taking the plot much further, showing the audience more of the life of the Japanese woman with the repression by her uncle who gets her to read erotic stories to his male friends. And then there is a new perspective on the Count and his dealings with the uncle.
The film is elegantly made, strongly visual, and directed by Chan-woo Park, who has specialised in violent stories in the past, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Old Boy, and while this film is not so explicitly physically violent, many of the interplays between the characters are psychologically violent.
1. Acclaim for the film? The title? Expectations? Twists in different perspectives?
2. The background of Korean history, the Japanese occupation, the colonial experience of Korea, the 1930s? Audience knowledge of this history?
3. The director, his career, the touches of the violent and the sensational?
4. The effect of the structure: the three parts, the different points of view, changes in plot development?
5. The film as a drama, aspects of the thriller, aspects of erotica? The musical score?
6. The situation of Hideo, living with her uncle, his being Korean, she being Japanese? The introduction of the Count, the fake count? The group of thieves and pickpockets, the head, the young people being trained? Sookie coming from this situation, her life, age, young? Chosen? The preparation for her job? The conspiracy? The character unable to carry on the duplicity, being coached? Her meeting Hideo, the house and its vastness, her work as a servant, the moods of her mistress, the room, the dreams, her reactions? Life in the house, companionship, the bath scene and the lollipop? Urging Her mistress to love the Count, the mistress’s questions, about sexuality, the long process and Sookie explaining sexuality, in action? The build-up of the relationship? The differences? The escape, the Count marrying Hideo, going to the honeymoon, arriving at the asylum, attendants ready to take Sookie, to Intern her? Hideo’s look?
7. The second part, Hideo and her perspective, her relationship with the uncle, the truth about him, the group of men gathering, her reading the pornographic novels and their reaction? The introduction of the Count? Soookie, learning to read, Hideo encouraging the sexual questions and the effect, the more explicit sex scene, the reactions of the two women? Hideo and the scene of the hanging? The revelation of the truth? The development of the counter plot, the set up, Sookie and her life in the asylum?
8. The third part: Sookie and her escape? The role of the Count, his deceptions? The money? The relationship with the uncle? The Count being captured, the severing of his fingers, the sadism of the uncle and his quoting the books? The Count, the money, the cigarettes, his smoke and their fatal effect?
9. The women, in disguise, changing the ticket, travelling together, their future together?
