Review of The Handmaiden / 아가씨, directed by Park Chan-wook

If you’re new here and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I began this website as a way to document everything I was watching and reading as a bit of a digital archive. I used to work professionally as a film critic for three years, so this was a way of also exploring my interests.

I did end up breaking off to do my own thing in the end, and this website has been an unexpected joy of mine. Although I myself am not Korean, Korea always had a soft spot for me. I lived there briefly in high school, continued this blog documenting my Korean film and literature journey, and even did my master’s thesis on colonial Korean women’s literature.

Which is fitting considering I’ve returned to The Handmaiden after all of these years. I remember watching this with a very good friend of mine when we were teenagers, and it was actually the first time I had seen a Park Chan-wook movie. Now I’ve seen them all way too many times.

I’ve been going into my own writing archives recently, as I’ve always written these little reviews here and there to keep up with what I was watching, but I never actually published them. I’ve been running a small project here on the blog where I revisit the films and write about them with fresh eyes, incorporating the old and new criticism.

So that’s how this post came about! I recently became unemployed, and while searching for a job, I was focusing on the blog a lot. This is going to come out way later than when I am typing this due to the backlog I have going on, but that’s fine.

Let’s get into the review! I know I can ramble forever if given the incentive, and I know the introduction isn’t what you’re here for.

During the colonial period, a Korean maid becomes tangled in the affairs of her lady.

This is a movie that’s split into thirds, as each part marks a point of departure for the characters. In Part 1 we meet the main cast of this movie. There’s a con guy named Count Fujiawara who wants to become involved with a rich Japanese socialite named Lady Hideko, and he wants to marry her and steal her money, sending her to the asylum.

He brings in a mere pickpocket named Sookhee to become Hideko’s maid. Her job is to convince Hideko to marry him, but the deeper she comes into the Japanese household, the more she comes to realize. We meet Hideko’s uncle, who sold out the Koreans, his own people, to the Japanese, for money, and he’s a bit of a messed up guy.

Hideko reads to him and his friends very lewd passages, and Sookhee is supposed to help her prepare them. That’s how the two end up having sex with each other, and while Sookhee grapples with her feelings, she strays from the plan. She falls back into it when Hideko suggests she might love her, but when she tries to reaffirm this with Hideko, she gets very upset and kicks her out.

Hideko and Fujiaware end up eloping, and Sookhee learns they both conned her. They drop her off at the asylum under Hideko’s name, and we open up Part Two learning about how Hideko was reading porn since she was a id for her uncle. Her aunt killed herself because she had to do this, and we go back to the beginning of the story, where Hideko and Fujiwara make a plan to elope and split the money.

Fujiwara also gave her opium to kill herself with, and Hideko demanded a girl be hired as her maid and sent to the asylum. Then comes in Sookhee, and despite Hideko not trying to fall in love, she does. She tried to kill herself when Sookhee suggested the marriage go on, and Hideko, taking advantage of Sookhee and the fact she can’t read, had a letter sent to her family to help them out.

Sookhee destroys all of the uncle’s books when she reveals them to her, and Hideko then sees Sookhee as someone who could save her as they keep destroying the books together. Part Three then begins, and it’s in the present day.

Hideko and Fujiwara are in a hotel together and he asks her to assume the identity of Sookhee. He then tells her Sookhee is going to die in a few days, which pisses her off, and Sookhee’s friend, unbeknownst to them, sets a fire and breaks her out of the asylum.

Fujiwara tries to rape Hideko, but is unable to do so as she poisoned his wine with the opium. She flees with his money, and she finds Sookhee. Fujiawara is found by the uncle, as Hideko sent him a letter about everything. He tortures him quite violently (this was the hardest scene to watch for me), and Fujiwara ass for the details about their sex.

Fujiawara asks for a cigarette, which is laced with mercury, and kills them both with the smoke. Sookhee and Hideko flee to China, where they find themselves free and able to have sex, being in a relationship, as much as they want.

Overall Thoughts

While I love the concept of two lesbians setting out for a brighter future in colonial Korea, I truly wish that this movie was made by someone who wasn’t Park Chan-wook. I wanted to see it from a lesbian filmmaker’s perspective, as I found this movie to be one that comes from a sexualized male gaze.

I noticed that when I first watched it when I was a teenager, and it becomes more apparent now as an adult who specialized in gender studies. I think I wanted something more genuine, and I’m not entirely convinced of these two’s relationship. Representation is great, but I just wanted it to go a step further.

It’s a solid movie full of craft. It’s certainly a Par Chan-wook movie at the end of the day, and he’s a master at filmmaking. I enjoy watching all of his movies due to the technical details, and I feel like he’s just nailed down what vision he wants and does it well.

Go watch it if you’re interested and want to see the movie. Taste is so subjective, and what I might not like as much you might adore. Neither of us are wrong!

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