This movie is Rashomon meets Oldboy meets a Tinto Brass.

There is something disturbing about Korean thriller films. It’s perhaps exaggerated by my lack of knowledge of the Korean culture, it feels very alien, disconnected, happenning in a shadow world, fragmented, a snowstorm in a crystal ball.

In The Handmaiden this is further amplified by the setting. The movie starts with a scene in a poverty-riden Korean, immediately contrasted with a serene dreamlike scene following a lonely car through a famous-five island, on a curving road, through through woods and darkness and distictly Japanese gardens. The setting is retro, with men driving old Ford motors and wearing striped suits, pretending to be British. The lighting is always mellow, gloomy, dark.

The plot is too complicated to be serious and only gets increasingly labyrinthine, it gets hard to tell what’s real and what’s a distraction, or if it all even means anything or is just a meaningless parody. Most scenes are intensely silent, close shots, focusing on one or two characters and the camera moving around like a madman. You can never tell if it’s a ghost story or a murder mystery or a magical realism story trespassing the boundaries between the dream world and the real.

The storytelling is very non-orthodox, inspired by Rashomon, moving linearly but changing perspectives making you further question the reality. But sticking true to the mystery / thriller genre there a looming suspense, a haunting tension fills all the scenes and if you know where to look, there are subtle clues hidden everywhere, constantly foreshadowing a future reveal.

The biggest distraction of all is the beauty. If the setting is not enough beautiful the actors are unbelievably gorgeous, if only artificially so. And to top it all the movie has several erotic sex scenes making you forget the plot, it almost feels like a evil ploy on the part of the director.

This movie is a disturbing piece of art, serene, beautiful, secretly and intensely emotional.