South Korea, 2016
Directed by Park Chan-wook
With: Kim Tae-ri (Sook-hee), Kim Min-hee (Lady Hideko), Ha Jung-woo (Count Fujiwara), Jo Jin-woong (Uncle Kouzuki)

Sook-hee is a member of a family of petty thieves surviving without much trouble under the Japanese occupation in the 1930s Korea. Among her sidekicks there is so-called Count Fujiwara. The aristocrat offers her to take part in an ambitious scheme: helping him to marry a wealthy Japanese heiress he would then send to an asylum. Lured by the huge financial reward he promises, Sook-hee accepts. She gets the job of being the handmaiden of Lady Hideko and founds herself among a bevy of servants tending to the lady and the lady’s uncle, Kouzuki. Kouzuki is actually a Korean native who has decided to serve the Japanese authorities ruling the peninsula and he has chosen to marry into a Japanese family, in this case Hideko’s aunt, who had to take care of her niece after the sudden death of her sister (the rest of their relatives is still in Japan).
The huge mansion where the plot is carried out has a weird and fascinating architecture, the stately features of an English manor meeting the simple, slender elements of a Japanese house; hallways are spacious but rooms clustered; the place is surrounded by a sprawling park and includes a mysterious basement. Definitely one of the most amazing and mysterious houses built for a film, it turns out to be a huge trap where innocence and cunning alike get lost as well as a kaleidoscope shifting from one perspective to another.
The narrative is told in two languages and unfolds in three parts. The first depicts the events and the relative success of Count Fujiwara’s plan from the viewpoint of Sook-hee who tragically ends up in the psychiatric hospital that was supposed to take care of Hideko. The second sticks to the vantage point of Hideko on her life’s story and the turns and twists affecting the Count’s plan. The third is the conclusion describing the fate awaiting the four main characters.
This “Rashômon”-inspired tale looks like a thriller but the screenplay and the talent of director Park Chan-wook take it in a completely different direction. The distinguished swindler’s plan goes awry for Sook-hee and Hideko fall in love and the unexpected passion between two woman whose culture and status should keep a world away from each other lead to unforeseen consequences for both Count Fujiwara and Kouzuki. The grotesque and sordid con man thought that he could manipulate the women’ minds effortlessly, holding an opinion on them that is stridently contemptuous. Living lavishly and selfishly appears to be his sole motivation to carry on with life and his moral standards are disgustingly low: few depravities shock him, from personal betrayal to sexual perversion. He finds a like-minded acolyte with Kouzuki, a creepy and callous fellow who has given Hideko a dreadfully distorted education, feeding her with fear and training her to be both a reader and an actress of sadistic and delirious erotic literature. Kouzuki’s hate of his native country is mirrored by the deep indifference of Count Fujiwara for any sense of national identity.
It seems rather fair to watch these two manly evildoers vanish near the ending into noxious air while the two young women sail to new horizons. They managed to outsmart the Count and to get away from the uncle’s claws and they can now live out their passionate love. Their affair started slow, with astonishment and uncertainty, the minds getting troubled before the bodies getting united. Sook-hee quickly loses her mind and in a mirror effect Hideko begins to share the same insanity. It is the discovery of their bodies that tip their fate. Shot twice, in a slightly different manner, the sex performance is really bold, and elegant. It is with this kind of brazenly erotic imagery that the director concludes his convoluted story. This lesbian love affair does come as a surprise but the feelings of the lovers have been delicately observed and their strength along with the tough and spirited struggle of the female characters against the hurdles built by patronizing and degenerate males make it credible – and even thrilling as their story is poking sarcastic fun at the macho cultures of Japan and Korea (a country where people are also ill at ease with homosexuality).
As his camera feverishly explores the strange mansion’s crannies and nooks and roves around the characters as they are under the sway of their complex sentiments and rationales, Park weaves astutely, relentlessly, a tapestry of magnificent images and sounds without losing a single thread. With flair, he delivers a peculiar but beguiling story whose complexities are not simply plot-driven but directly relate to themes that are both polemical and high-minded, from homosexual love to political or social domination. His cinematographic virtuosity is on full display, although it sometimes sounds as he has been carried away by it and is somehow showing off.