The Handmaiden runs almost two and a half hours, but it’s stuffed with enough narrative twists and detail to fill a movie twice as long. It’s a gluttonous feast for the mind and the eye, not to mention a few other organs. In fact, the only real problem with the latest ravishing, demented effort from South Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook is that you probably need to see it twice to absorb everything it throws at you.
Here are the basics: In 1930s Korea, under Japanese colonial rule, a young woman takes a position as a servant to a wealthy Japanese heiress, Lady Hideko, who lives in an isolated, expansive country estate. She’s been recruited by Fujiwara, an amoral suitor of said heiress, to help him woo her so that he can marry her, get her committed to an insane asylum, and take all her money. (If this has a Jane Eyre sort of ring to it, that’s because The Handmaiden is based on Welsh novelist Sarah Waters’ 2002 book Fingersmith, which is set in Victorian England.)
Before long, though, the servant and her mistress form a bond of friendship, and before much longer, a more intimate one. But who’s manipulating whom?