The Handmaiden (2016) Review: A Con Wrapped in Silk

Is The Handmaiden worth watching?

Yes. The Handmaiden is Park Chan-wook at his most playful and precise, a gorgeous period con-artist thriller that turns into one of the most surprising love stories of its decade. The design, the performances and the puzzle-box structure are all first-rate, and the film is as funny as it is suspenseful. The reservation is its explicitness: the sex scenes are long and graphic, and some viewers find them more voyeuristic than the story needs.

What is The Handmaiden about?

The Handmaiden is set in Korea in the 1930s, during the Japanese occupation. Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) is a young pickpocket raised among a family of thieves. A smooth con man posing as a Japanese count (Ha Jung-woo) recruits her for a scheme: she will become the maid of Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee), a secluded Japanese heiress who lives on her domineering uncle’s vast country estate, and help the count win Hideko’s hand so that he can seize her fortune.

Sook-hee enters the house expecting an easy mark. What she finds is a strange, lonely woman, a household of strict rules and a library that hides more than books. Park directs from a screenplay he adapted with Chung Seo-kyung from Sarah Waters’s novel Fingersmith. The film is a South Korean production in Korean and Japanese and runs 145 minutes.

Park’s design turns the house into a trap

The estate is the film’s great set piece: a mansion that fuses an English country house with a Japanese wing, a physical expression of the uncle’s obsession with imported refinement and colonial power. Chung Chung-hoon’s camera glides through its corridors and gardens with a sense of order that is always slightly menacing, and the production design and costumes are extraordinarily rich. Every room seems to hold a secret, and the film teaches you to watch it closely.

Park structures the story in parts, each shifting perspective, and the pleasure lies in how often he makes you revisit what you thought you understood. The reversals are mechanical in the best sense, laid out with a watchmaker’s precision, and they never feel like cheap tricks because each one deepens the characters rather than merely surprising the audience.

Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri make it a love story

The con would be clever but cold without its two leads. Kim Tae-ri, in her first major screen role, plays Sook-hee as quick, earthy and funny, a thief whose confidence slowly wavers as she grows attached to her target. Kim Min-hee’s Hideko is harder to read, poised and melancholy, with flashes of mischief that suggest a woman far more aware than she lets on. Their scenes together, including a much-discussed bath scene built around a sore tooth, are charged with humour and longing.

Ha Jung-woo is enjoyably oily as the count, and the actor playing the uncle makes him a truly repellent figure. The film’s real subject is how two women navigate men who want to own them, and that thread gives the thriller its emotional pull.

Where excess becomes an issue

Park has never been a restrained filmmaker, and The Handmaiden’s indulgences are part of its flavour. But the lengthy sex scenes, shot with a lingering camera, have prompted fair debate about whose pleasure they serve. The film also includes moments of cruelty and grotesque violence that jar with its romantic core, and its 145 minutes occasionally feel stretched in the middle section. These are real flaws, but they rarely dim the film’s intelligence.

Who should watch The Handmaiden?

It is ideal for adult viewers who enjoy clever thrillers, period drama and romance with bite. Watch it with full attention: the details matter, and the structure rewards concentration. Content warnings include graphic sex, nudity, violence and scenes of psychological abuse, so it is strictly for adults.

If it hooks you, continue with:

• Decision to Leave, Park’s later, subtler romance-thriller about obsession between a detective and a suspect.
• Oldboy, the director’s breakthrough, darker and more violent but equally invested in twisting perception.
• Parasite, another Korean film that uses a house and a deception to explore class and power.

The verdict

The Handmaiden is a dazzling, mischievous thriller and a genuinely moving romance, crafted with rare precision and anchored by two excellent lead performances. Its explicitness and occasional excess keep it from perfection, but it stands among Park Chan-wook’s finest films.

Rating: 4.5/5