The Handmaiden

I believe The Handmaiden will be something completely different for a lot of viewers. More important than the story, which has an excellent twist, is the completely original, borderline-perfect treatment. The best thing about the whole film, in my opinion, is the division of the story into three parts and the precise cinematography. Actually, I can't even say that the cinematographer did a good job with it, it would sound somehow underrated. This was no acting, it was a very skilled job, shot with confidence. Another thing that plays a very important role and adds to the overall impression is the costumes. It was also because of these and the hair styling that some of the shots were so famous. Of course, no less credit goes to the actors, who performed something incredible under the direction of Park. The only thing I could easily do without are the rather lengthy sex scenes. It's hard to say how the rest of the film would have affected me in their absence, and if the story would have lost its weight without them. In any case, there were too many of them. And they were also quite detailed and perhaps a bit too overt. /// Since I still can't get The Handmaiden out of my head, I'm raising the rating one more star after a month. (12/08/2016)

Park Chan-wook is probably my least favorite Korean director. This film was boring. Interesting in terms of art, the atmosphere was decent, even the eroticism was nice, but that was it. The story was too convoluted for me, I got lost. There’s no gore, nothing much to praise. I survived, I'll give it a weak three stars with gritted teeth. Still better than Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, but never again. 50%. (10/11/2016)

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)

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)

Even though it's essentially an erotic thriller, I can't help but appreciate much more than just the erotica, which is very well shot. I particularly liked the composition of individual scenes, where Chan-wook Park proves he has an eye for detail, a sense of color selection, and an overall arrangement of shots. These are images that soothe the soul. (30/09/2016)