The Handmaiden

For some viewers, The Handmaiden will be a lesbian romance in which the path to discovering one’s own identity and overcoming the patriarchy leads through an encounter with a giant octopus. Others may see the film as a reflection on artistic representations of the female body and the pleasure of looking at them or simply as an erotic thriller with a clear and cohesive narrative in the manner of Hitchcock. Beneath the beautiful surface, however, there are enough other layers with which Park seems to be so fascinated that you'll want to see The Handmaiden several times despite its extraordinary length and slowly rising pace. (14/08/2016)

Although there was no trace of action in the film, the story certainly didn't stagnate or get boring. The running time that seemed scary at first wasn't a problem in the end. The plot may have been slightly overelaborate in places, sometimes I even got lost in the story (due to the alternation of time planes), but I wasn't bored for a second, and the uncle's weird cravings were quite amusing. (28/10/2019)

Unfortunately, the eroticism permeating the film doesn't work very well, making it more annoying than exciting. Although there are plenty of plot twists in it, The Handmaiden gets a bit boring after a while. I felt like I was watching one big perversion made in Korea that was good visually, but that's just not enough. (45%) (20/06/2020)

Instead of a refined erotic game, it is more of a shallow voyeur prank that is neither provocative nor too eccentric. Its excessiveness lies in the overuse of sentiment, melodramatic clichés and naive acting. The potentially great double-twist is completely lost in the storytelling, which lacks economy and finesse. Subjectively, it took 4 hours. Park filmed his Sucker Punch to name the hidden chambers of desire and lust, as well as the devastating manipulation associated with them. But this much more than a masochistic feast evokes a red library with a few over the top violent scenes. Disappointment... [Cannes 2016] (14/05/2016)

Typical Park, where you can't trust so much as a coffee mug, which once again captivates with its moral resignation and charmingly inappropriate humor. This time it doesn't thematize anything beyond the edge of the film, but instead resembles a child in a sandbox building a castle out of fifty little dolls, each belonging to a different battered child. On first viewing, it makes your head spin, not only because of the jumbled plot, but especially because of Park's tradition of multi-layer shots that throw in several pieces of plot information at once, and you even have to marvel at their incredible mise-en-scene and work with movement and focus. (28/07/2016)