For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

A lot of fun.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Park Chan-Wook's (Old Boy/Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) latest is a beautiful erotic thriller. A Korean girl gets a position as a maid for a spoiled, uptight Japanese woman for the sole purpose of being seduced by a visiting suitor (the maid's partner in crime) for her fortune. Ornately shot & designed to maximum effect, this may be the closest Wook has come to making a feel good film if one can brand this film as. Truly a feast for the eyes.

Impeccable art direction, looks worthy of great movies. It deserves a high note, but so watch out for the third part that has given a drop in performance. It may have lacked consistency with the previous two. Anyway, great movie!

The Handmaiden was born as an adaptation of Sarah Water's 2002 novel Fingersmith, a Victorian crime novel Park Chang-wook took the inspiration from, taking as a reference its investigation in repression and the limits of female empowerment. Despite of this, he was able to convert the story, the characters and the costumes and scenarios into the dynamics of the Japanese occupation of South Korea during the war. Thus, the film tackles themes as love, betrayal, conflicts on personal interests and liberation. With only four characters, the movie offers a magnificent story with several plots and twists, thanks to a successful choice of narrative style and form. The Handmaiden is an amazing movie that evidences the perfected style of a recognized director who surpasses himself with every movie he releases, that shows majestic combinations of quality cinematography, editing, sound and the perfect use of scenarios, a very well written and complex characters, along with an even more well developed story throughout the plot, thanks to the correct decisions made on form and style of the film. All of this brings together an amazing experience that makes this movie an outstanding work in the 7th art history.

Chan Wook Park RomanceA conman hires a bootlegger's daughter to help him convince a wealthy woman to marry him. As the woman and her maid come closer and closer the lines get blurred who's conning who ..P.S. :: There are graphic nude scenes, Japanese erotic-folklore--- "This is a movie for the perverted mind." - David Fincher10/10