The Film Experience

by Michael Cusumano

Hello, everyone. I'm celebrating my 80th day of quarantine by letting my mind wander to one of the most uproariously debauched scenes in recent years.

Scene: The Reading
We hear about Lady Hideko’s (Min-hee Kim) readings a few times before we actually see one in action. Earlier, when she says she is worn out after a performance, we take it as a sign of her weakness. She is so sheltered and delicate a simple reading wipes her out. When we actually witness one of these performances halfway through Chan-wook Park’s The Handmaiden, we change our tune in a big hurry. The readings are nothing if not impressive displays of stamina...

Nothing can fully prepare the viewer for the scene we witness in Uncle Kouzuki’s (Jin-woong Cho) library of ancient smut, but the film does ramp to that perverse showstopper with an accumulation of twisted and sensual details. Starting with the unexpectedly erotic use of a thimble there is a cavalcade of black tongues, fondled corset buttons, and phallic snake statues. By the time we reach the reading we are fully aware that despite the sumptuous period detail (it's set in 1930's Korea) we’ve definitely strayed far afield from genteel Merchant/Ivory territory.

Still the scene is gasp-inducing. Lady Hideko sits at a small lectern impeccably dressed, every inch a proper lady save for a pair of black gloves. Logically, the gloves are to keep the rare and fragile book from getting damaged but they are an unmistakable sign of depravity to come. In front of her are a scattering of men, well-dressed perverts arranged just so on a small flight of steps, smoking and listening placidly as she reads erotic scenarios that would be right at home in Penthouse were they not written with the flowery language of classic literature. Lady Hideko acts the scene out with verve, going so far as to strangle herself at the requisite moment in the story. When you feel certain the scene has nothing else up its sleeve, they pull back the curtain to reveal the life-sized marionette for Lady Hideko to mount like a mechanical bull in a cowboy bar, the better to give the men a mental picture of the acrobatic sex acts described in the story.

Simply describing the facts of the scene doesn’t really do it justice. There have been infinitely more outlandish and explicit sex acts portrayed in countless less artful films. Even with the giant sex puppet it is, after all, still just a reading. It’s not the extremism of the scene that makes it so striking, but the way Park’s film feels as if it has tapped into something truly, elementally kinky. It's Lynchian in the way that, taken alone, the details of the scene don't necessarily break with reality, but combined they seem to bypass our logical brain and lodge straight in the subconscious. It all escalates so skillfully that by the end of The Handmaiden an octopus leaps off the pages of Uncle Kouzuki’s lovingly hand-painted porno and into reality and the audience doesn't bat an eye.

It’s no accident the the perspective of the story Lady Hideko reads is that of the heterosexual male. The prose lingers on ornate descriptions of the female anatomy, with nary a mention of anything the owner of that body might be seeing or enjoying. It’s telling that the marionette is completely blank, the easier for the men in attendance to insert themselves into the fantasy. It's the perfect detail for a film about men who use women as pawns in their schemes (one of them is used as a literal puppet in this scene) only to be undone because they have a complete blindspot for female agency.

When aspects of the erotic story are echoed in the sex scenes between Lady Hideko and Sook-hee (Tae-ri Kim), it’s more than a sly subversion of phallocentric material. It’s the key to the heart of the puzzle box plot. If their porno had the occasional tangent about female pleasure these con-men might have been a little more on guard about a bond forming between two women.

That con-artist subgenre can be overwhelmed by the game between writer and audience to see who can stay one step ahead. Park’s whirling carousel of sexual power plays never has that problem. When David Mamet’s con-men show up spouting their patter in their $3000 suits one immediately starts inspecting the plot for the extra levels. The Handmaiden can toy so beautifully with the audience because we can’t fathom it’s holding back anything extra.

Previously on Season 2 of "The New Classics"

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