Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Handmaiden

2022; Michigan State University Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.14321/qed.9.issue-2.0176

2327-1590

Jeehyun Jenny Lee, Kate Rich,

Japanese History and Culture

The Handmaiden (original Korean title: “Ah-ga-ssi,” denoting lady in Korean) is a South Korean film based on Sarah Waters's novel The Fingersmith. Rather than the Victorian-era Britain setting of the novel, the film opts for Japanese-occupied Korea as the backdrop for a scam turned queer love story. It was released in South Korea in 2016 and selected for the Cannes Film Festival as well as the Palme d'Or. In 2016 alone, The Handmaiden was sold to over 175 countries and recently found more popularity as it debuted on streaming services across the world.1Korean film experts and audiences alike responded favorably to the film's narrative focus on the two women leads, whose shrewdness eventually outwit the ploy of the male characters. Most important, the film has been celebrated for advancing representations of queer romance that are close to nonexistent in Korean mainstream cinema. Although lesbian characters have been present in a few Korean films, such as the Memento Mori (1999)2, Life is Peachy (2010)3, A Girl at My Door (2014)4, and most recently Mother-in-Law (2019)5 and Perfect One Night Stand (2019)6, they have rarely made a significant presence in Korean mainstream cinema.7Both the popular press and scholarly commentary on the movie acclaimed the purportedly empowering portrayal of lesbian characters. Feminist commentary on The Handmaiden illuminate the protagonists’ subversion of patriarchal structures that suppress women's sexuality and reinforce heteronormativity. According to popular feminist interpretations, the protagonists Sookhee and Hideko represent feminist solidarity against gendered violence and their nonchalant lesbianism liberate women's sexuality from the heterosexual male gaze.8 Unlike most queer romance in Korean cinema, where the plot is centered on the challenges queer couples face as sexual minorities in a heteronormative society, the protagonists of The Handmaiden have a romance that ends in liberation.The three-part film follows Tamako, a pickpocket who takes part in a scam and renames herself Sookhee. She works with a Korean fisherman's son determined to marry the wealthy Lady Hideko by posing as Count Fujiwara, a Japanese nobleman. They plan to put the lady in a mental institution after the marriage and steal her inheritance. She goes to work at the grand estate as a handmaiden where Izumi Hideko lives under the control of her Uncle Kozuki. Kozuki is a fabulously rich Korean man who made his fortune by helping the Japanese colonize his home country. Set in the early twentieth century, the film is rife with markers of Japanese-controlled Korea. Kozuki's estate is influenced by Japanese architecture and he idolizes European literature. We later learn that he is also violent towards women and that Hideko performs erotic readings of sadistic pornography under his instruction.At first, Sookhee is in awe of her expensive possessions and plays along with the Count's plan to seduce the lady. The plot thickens as she develops a sexual and emotional relationship with Hideko. The women end up admitting they both had plans with the Count to manipulate one another for their own gain. Hideko agreed to a scheme with Fujiwara to escape her uncle's wrath by putting Sookhee in a mental institution under her name. After confessing their original intentions, the women decide to team up and escape the men who have manipulated them throughout the film.Each part of the film marks a change in perspective as well as a progression in the plot. The first part is shown in Sookhee's eyes whereas the second reveals new details about many of the same events from Hideko's perspective. The final part of the film portrays their shared perspective as both women scam Count Fujiwara to get the inheritance back and anger Kozuki with their escape. The prominent men in the film end up dying at each other's hands while the women run away to China.Although The Handmaiden contributed to the limited amount of queer representation in Korean cinema, Park Chan Wook and the cast rarely discuss it as a queer film. Some writers in South Korea attribute the lack of queer labeling to the economic interests of the producers and investors.9 With a production budget of over US$8.8 million, The Handmaiden is unlike other queer films in Korea that work on small production budgets and generate small revenue. Although an increasing number of Korean queer films have been produced in the past two decades, with the Korea Queer Film Festival (KQFF) at the forefront of increasing space for queer voices, their work is rarely categorized as mainstream.Audiences, however, might see it quite differently. Even before the first screening of The Handmaiden, the film's sex scene generated great anticipation among Korean audiences who are not accustomed to seeing intimate scenes between women. In multiple interviews, Park Chan Wook emphasized that his main goal was to decenter the male gaze throughout the filming process. Indeed, the camera angles in the first intimate scene are notably different from some more voyeuristic approaches. The scene is mostly shown from Sookhee's perspective rather than a view of the two women from afar. In an interview, Sarah Waters praised Park Chan Wook for his thoughtful adaptation of her novel, noting that “though the film is a story told by a man, it's still very faithful to the idea that the women are appropriating a very male pornographic tradition to find their own way of exploring their desires.”10In the years since its initial release, the queer feminist takeaways from The Handmaiden found their way into the hearts of a transnational audience for good reason. The film offers an excellent array of performances and a demonstration of queer desires in colonial times. Scholar-teachers, critics, and casual spectators alike might take up the film as an intriguing case study for cinematic practices that aim to decenter dominant gazes. A pedagogical presentation of the film might benefit from pairing the viewing of the film with materials about its context. Both the cultural and industrial conditions that surround it could enrich a classroom discussion of its implications. In and outside of the classroom, The Handmaiden provides more transnational resources for thinking through queer feminism across time.