The Handmaiden

No Other Choice

24/01/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Korean director, Park Chan Wook’s latest offering is very hard to pigeonhole. The mastermind behind films like Oldboy and The Handmaiden has always played fast and loose with genre, and No Other Choice continues in that tradition. While it initially feels like a free-spirited romp in the vein of classic Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets, it also ventures fearlessly into the realms of crime thriller, knockabout slapstick and, in its latter stages, body horror, as the main character becomes ever more embroiled in his own ruthless machinations.

Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) is a long-serving employee of paper-making company, Solar. He’s been with them for twenty-five years and has recently managed to fulfil his dream of buying his childhood home. He lives there with his devoted wife, Son Ye-jin (Lee Mi-ree), his teenage stepson, Si-one (Woo Seung-Kim), and his young daughter, Ri-one (So Yul Choi), who barely speaks and is obsessed with playing the cello. When the company gifts the family some very expensive eels for their barbecue, Man-su is at first delighted – until a colleague warns him that such gifts are generally made before the bosses issue bad news.

Sure enough, Man-su soon finds himself on three months’ redundancy notice and his initial attempts to find work seem doomed to failure. He and his family try to cut back on expenses as much as they possibly can, but it’s not long before they are obliged to consider the possibility that they may have to consider selling their home, complete with the greenhouse where Man-su cultivates his beloved bon sai trees. When he hears about a new, highly-successful company called Moon Paper, he realises it’s his last hope of staying in work. But he also knows that there will be other veterans of the industry seeking employment there.

So he embarks on a ruthless mission to eliminate the opposition…

Based on a story by American crime writer, Donald E Westlake (and previously filmed by Greek director Costa Gavras – to whom No Other Choice is respectfully dedicated), this version of the tale swings confidently from one set-piece to the next. None of Man-su’s elaborate plans go anywhere near as smoothly as he has hoped, causing him to flail wildly through a series of botched executions and desperate attempts to conceal evidence. In less accomplished hands, the variations in tone could be jarring, but Chan Wook handles the different story strands with absolute authority, while cinematographer Kin Woo-hyung manages to make every scene look ravishing: one long-shot in particular, which depicts an ocean-side murder, actually makes me gasp in admiration.

Byung-hun – who many viewers will recognise as one of the key actors from TV’s Squid Game – is superb in the lead role, his seemingly implacable gaze somehow conveying the lead character’s inner desperation and his overriding will to succeed, whatever the cost. As the story hurtles to its inevitable conclusion, Man-su’s family find themselves increasingly drawn into the intrigue and are faced with a terrible decision. Do they shop him to the authorities or help him achieve his goal?

But it’s in the final sequences where the true horror of the situation is fully revealed: the realisation that all of Byung-hun’s efforts have been wasted on ensuring humanity’s looming obsolescence in the very industry to which he has devoted his working life. It’s a sobering and thought-provoking conclusion to yet another triumphant film by Park Chan-wook.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

The Handmaiden: Director’s Cut

14/04/17

The term ‘masterpiece’ is often used but I’ve rarely seen a film more deserving of that word that Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden. It’s a sumptuous, sensual and occasionally audacious slice of melodrama, a loose adaptation of Sarah Water’s novel, Fingersmith. That book, of course, is set in Victorian London, but here the story is transposed to Korea in the 1930s, when the country was under Japanese occupation. To say that the adaptation works well, would be an understatement. It’s an inspired idea that plays like a dream.

Sookee (Tae-re Kim) is hired to be the handmaiden to reclusive Japanese heiress, Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim) and the two women quickly form a powerful bond, one that develops into a full-blown relationship. To say any more about the plot would do the film a disservice; suffice to say, that some way into proceedings, we flash back to scenes we only glimpsed in the film’s opening moments and are given more information – Sookee’s employment, it turns out, is not as innocent as it might at first appear. From this point, Park Chan-wook seems to delight in constantly pulling the rug out from under us. No sooner have we begun to accept a new tranche of information, then we are obliged to rethink it as earlier scenes are revisited with the addition of a few small points we missed out on first time around. It’s a brilliant technique and, despite this being the extended Director’s Cut, nearly three hours in duration, the film never loses momentum, but holds you spellbound for its entire run.

Those of a prudish persuasion should be warned that The Handmaiden is an unashamedly erotic movie – there are explicit sexual scenes here that fully test the boundaries of that 18 certificate, but it’s important to say that this aspect of the film never feels prurient – indeed, the relationship between Sookee and Hideko is perhaps the most joyful and ‘pure’ aspect of the story. Contrast it with the conduct of the male protagonists: the cunning and deceitful Count Fujiwara (Jung-woo Hah) – who weaves a merciless tangled web in order to enrich himself – and the frankly repellent Uncle Kouzuki (Jin-woong Jo) – a man who has devoted his life to the pursuit of printed pornography and who has made his niece, Hideko, do unspeakable things from childhood; the true love the women share is something to be celebrated.

And this sensual quality goes further than just the sex scenes. It’s in pretty much every frame of the lush cinematography, the gorgeous period costumes, the musical score. Korean movies are currently making waves across the film industry, but The Handmaiden has everything it needs to create a real tsunami. And a masterpiece? Oh, yes, most assuredly. If this comes to a big screen anywhere near you, don’t miss it.

5 stars

Philip Caveney