The Handmaiden

Celebrated filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s (OLDBOY, LADY VENGEANCE, STOKER) ravishing new crime drama, THE HANDMAIDEN is adapted from Welsh author Sarah Waters’ 2002 Victorian-set lesbian romance novel Fingersmith. Park and co-writer Chung Seo-kyung have transposed Waters’ story to 1930s-era colonial Korea and Japan. THE HANDMAIDEN premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where production designer Ryu Seong-hie was awarded the Vulcain Prize for the Technical Artist, and will also screen as a Special Presentation during the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

THE HANDMAIDEN is the gripping and sensual tale of two women – a young Japanese lady living on a secluded estate, and a Korean woman who is hired to serve as her new handmaiden, but is secretly plotting with a con man to defraud her of her large inheritance. Powered by remarkable performances from Kim Min-hee (RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN) as Lady Hideko, Ha Jung-woo (THE CHASER) as the con man who calls himself the Count, and sensational debut actress Kim Tae-ri as the maid Sookee, THE HANDMAIDEN borrows the most dynamic elements of its source material and combines it with Park Chan-wook’s singular vision and energy to create a mesmerizing experience boasting more tangled plots and bodies than an octopus has tentacles.

“Expectations are fully met in Park Chan-wook’s exquisitely filmed The Handmaiden (Agassi), an amusingly kinky erotic thriller and love story that brims with delicious surprises.”
– Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter

“‘The Handmaiden’ is the Korean director Park Chan-wook’s most delectable narrative feature in years. This ornately art-directed erotic puzzler centers around two beautiful women…Over the course of the movie’s three chapters, two of which provide a revelatory, ‘Rashomon’ style shift in perspective, the women will become lovers, rivals and allies, and their teasing, mercurial role play is what gives the movie its seductive pull.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times