The Handmaiden

pretty interesting twist in the end, i liked it.

BUT a lot of it is generally very long, a lot of those scenes are important but also a lot just point to the same thing, that being the colonization of korea from japan and how the culture mishes and mashes in the wrong ways and the mysoginistic nature of the men in power. i think thats interesting and in a lot of ways, park chan-wook and chung seo-kyung write such a good screenplay but i do have some problems.

for one, a lot of the chemistry is good but when divorced from eachother, sook-hee definitely doesn't stand out as a character despite being at the end rope of the colonization movement in the 1930s, she and many others are hurt by that but you get one definitive scene. it does create sympathy but i didn't find her interesting besides that whenever put into an individual spot.

the digital cinematography is also a thing, it can look beautifull but you can REAAALLLY tell this is park chan-wook's first or second step into digital cinematography allongside cinematographer chung chung-hoon. it CAN look beautifull but also a lot of the images look dull as fuck and while better then most digital films, it feels steril and too cold for my liking. park chan-wook can both be sympathetic and cold but it doesn't always work.

the two lead performances are both fantastic and its themes of colonization and the rejection of that is great but a lot of the times its just repeating the same thing and a quarter of the film is very ugly and sad to look at.

(watch my feature film kodak: https://boxd.it/dNvKo1 )

The Handmaiden2016

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