The Handmaiden (2016): Lesbians Scamming Men and Staying Together is Cinema — Review

Who’s fooling who, and who’s smarter than who?

That’s the entire experience of watching The Handmaiden. Everybody in this film performs for each other, manipulates each other, watches each other. It starts as an erotic psychological thriller that slowly transforms into something much more emotional: a story about women reclaiming themselves from men who tried to turn them into objects. I watched the extended version and genuinely never expected the ending would turn into one of the best lesbian dramas I’ve ever seen.

The Handmaiden is a South Korean erotic psychological thriller directed by Park Chan-wook, starring Kim Tae-ri as Sook-hee, Kim Min-hee as Lady Hideko, Ha Jung-woo as Fujiwara, and Cho Jin-woong as Kouzuki. The cinematography was handled by Chung Chung-hoon, and honestly the visual direction throughout the film was absolutely insane.

The film is basically about a pickpocket named Sook-hee who gets involved in a scam to help a conman seduce a wealthy Japanese woman, Lady Hideko, so they can steal her inheritance. But because the film constantly shifts perspectives and hides information from the audience, the story becomes WAY more complicated than it first appears. Every character has their own motives, secrets, performances, and manipulations. Nobody is exactly innocent, but somehow the film still manages to emotionally humanize all of them in the end.

Non-Linear Storytelling and Manipulation

One of the strongest parts of the film for me was the non-linear storytelling structure. Some scenes were repeated twice, but shown through different perspectives, and somehow it never felt repetitive at all. Instead, every replay completely changed my understanding of the characters and the situation itself. A scene that first looked romantic suddenly became manipulative. A scene that looked manipulative suddenly became heartbreaking later.

There were also moments where scenes got cut short earlier, then replayed completely near the ending with entirely new context attached to them. The film trusted the audience enough to slowly put the puzzle together by themselves, and I LOVE when movies do that instead of spoonfeeding everything.

This structure is also why the characters felt so layered. Everybody constantly performs a role for survival. Sook-hee pretends to be loyal, Fujiwara pretends to be sophisticated, Hideko pretends to be naive, and Kouzuki pretends to be cultured and intellectual while actually being a deeply rotten pervert underneath all those books and aesthetics. The film constantly asks who’s acting? Who’s manipulating? Who’s actually in control? Surprisingly, the answers keep changing until the very end.

The Atmosphere

Visually, this film was so simple yet insanely beautiful. I’m not even someone who understands cinematography techniques, but this movie made me notice those minor details, layers, and EVERYTHING. There were so many zoom-ins, which I personally love because zooming changes the way we observe details inside a frame. When the camera slowly zoomed in, suddenly tiny expressions, uncomfortable gestures, or hidden objects became impossible to ignore. Then when it zoomed out, the environment itself started swallowing the characters whole.

The mansion especially felt like a prison disguised as elegance. The camerawork also constantly made me feel like somebody was always watching somebody else. Even before the film openly talks about voyeurism, the camera already makes us feel it. That’s why the atmosphere felt so uncomfortable in such a good way. And the editing?? SO good. Some moments were fragmented into pieces before finally being explained later. Information was constantly being hidden, delayed, or revisited from another perspective. Sounds complicated, yes, but the movie handled it so smoothly that it became addicting to watch. The soundtrack also deserves praise because every time it entered, the atmosphere instantly became more tense and emotionally overwhelming.

The Intimacy

I think The Handmaiden is one of the few films that truly understands what sexual tension actually means. Some movies include sex scenes just to shock people or look “mature”, “this is for adults”, but here, the intimacy genuinely becomes part of the story engine itself. The sex scenes were effective because they delivered emotions that could never be expressed through dialogue alone, or through any other way.

Desire in this film becomes trust, fear, comfort, manipulation, curiosity, rebellion, and eventually freedom. This leads to something where eroticism feels so different from male fantasy-driven films. At first, the film deliberately presents women through voyeuristic perspectives. Hideko is constantly forced into performance. Men watch her, consume her, fantasize about her, and reduce her into entertainment. But later, the emotional energy completely changes once the intimacy becomes something shared between Sook-hee and Hideko instead of something performed for men.

When men are involved, sexuality feels invasive and exploitative. When the women reclaim it for themselves, it suddenly becomes warm, emotional, vulnerable, and liberating. That contrast was honestly brilliant. And ugh… the chemistry and sexual tension here were actually insane.

Patriarchy, Exploitation & Male Voyeurism

For me, the film was absolutely about breaking down patriarchal systems that constantly burden and exploit women. Kouzuki perfectly represents male entitlement masked with sophistication. He hides behind literature, art, and intellectualism, but underneath all of that, he is just deeply a pervert who’s obsessed with control, pornography, humiliation, and ownership over women’s bodies.

The most disturbing part is not even the erotic books themselves, but the way Hideko was forced to perform those readings in front of men since she was young. She was basically raised inside exploitation. Even her voice and sexuality were treated like products for male consumption. That library honestly felt horrifying to me.

There’s a scene where Sook-hee angrily destroys everything inside it after realizing what Hideko suffered through, and this one of the most satisfying scenes in the entire film. Especially after learning about Hideko’s aunt, who suffered under Kouzuki’s abuse so badly that she eventually chose death because she could no longer survive the humiliation and psychological torture forced upon her.

The film also made me think about how pornography and objectification still affect women today. Kouzuki tortures women so obsessively, psychologically, that he no longer even sees them as human beings anymore, only as fantasies designed for male pleasure and control. It honestly reminded me of modern porn addiction and unrealistic expectations toward women that still exist everywhere now.

I am a firm believer that women don’t naturally despise women. What destroys women is exploitation, humiliation, objectification, and patriarchal systems that constantly reduce them into something worthless. That’s why the emotional connection between Sook-hee and Hideko became so powerful to me.

The Emotional Payoff and Liberation

What shocked me the most is that underneath all the manipulation, eroticism, plot twists, and psychological games, The Handmaiden ended up becoming strangely emotional and triumphant. The relationship between Sook-hee and Hideko slowly transforms from deception into genuine love and understanding. Their intimacy becomes the only space in the film untouched by male control.

It no longer felt like simply escaping a scam or surviving manipulation. It felt like reclaiming agency, desire, identity, and freedom from men who tried to weaponize those things against them their entire lives. By the final act, I stopped caring about the thriller aspect and became fully emotionally invested in these women finally escaping together. And yes, I genuinely think this is one of the best queer films I’ve seen so far. I came expecting psychological mind games and disturbing eroticism. I did not expect to leave questioning my sexuality, lol.