The Handmaiden Review

Park moves Sarah Waters from Victorian England to Korea under Japanese occupation, and the transplant sharpens the book rather than flattening it, because colonial hierarchy gives every lie a second meaning. The three-part structure is the engine: part one plays as a con, part two rewinds the same weeks from the other woman's side, and part three lets the marks run the table. Chung Chung-hoon photographs the hybrid mansion, half English manor and half Japanese estate, in lacquered blacks and greens, and the reading-room performances are staged as theater so the perversion registers as commerce.

Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri hold the center by playing two people who each believe they are the one doing the deceiving. Ha Jung-woo's fake count and Cho Jin-woong's uncle supply the cruelty, and the film is far funnier than its reputation suggests. Our reservations are real. The sex scenes are shot with a symmetry that serves the camera more than the characters, and the basement finale tips into a lurid register the earlier hours had earned the right to skip. Everything before it is immaculate.