Handmaiden: The Brightest Shine of Pitch Black

The great story is one you are able to be connected. For me Handmaiden was one of the greatest for 2016. Park Chan-wook had been an allegiant of noir movie, a sincere follower and bringer. And even in a brightest sunny day of Handmaiden, it still embodies its dark tune. And I yielded to be taken.

For more than two hours, that movie brought me a gloomy vibration. To tell the story of Japanese-Koreans in its most luxurious scenery of 1930’s, Handmaiden showed us the contrary. Whoever want to be a lady, but who knows that is becoming a lady means to abide the multilayer proposal of rich people culture. The art of being fraud and forgery. Many movies have been providing this reality, both in Western so is in Eastern civilization. But handmaiden, as The Memoir of Geisha, shared us the deepest slice: sexuality. Soon we know, the sexuality for women in prosperous circle in the past means nothing but lockup.

Divided in three part, each stage gave us different perspective that was adding the previous scene gracefully. The story of a prince that saves a day of the princess is routine for drama romance story, but what if the prince turn out to be just a handmaiden. And how if the princess is hiding a secret herself. The love that blossomed between a woman to another one is a common thing in Hollywood movie today, but not in this kind of terrain.

Sook-Hee (Tae-ri Kim) was been submitted as a new Korean handmaiden for Japanese lady, Hideko (Min-hee Kim) by Count Fujiwara (Jung-woo Ha), the one that plotted to be the real con man. She felt sorry for life that Hideko must live. As the opposite for the beginning of the movie that we’d been offered a backdrop scenario about her actual duty is for stealing Hideko’s faith so Fujiwara is able to overcome her wealth, her pity turned to be adoration to Hideko, and it continued to be love. The lusted one. But in the short time, we’d surprised that it was not the only back yard narrative, since we’ve been rendered another story from the lady’s side. The third part may be predictable, but still satisfying, considering we’ve been bored by satiric Hollywood stories that become more parodical lately.

But it was not only the story, the acting, the camerawork, and the cinematography that would tie us to this movie. Not less than tens of minutes, we’d been served the beautiful body of those two women. From the shy bird side to the very raw. But the intensity of the story would fly us away from porn flick – except for the porn-minded one, I bet. Because that scene is knitted beautifully together with the detail of its account. Handmaiden gave us sexuality in a right recipe. And yet, since we knew that the most closed society, silently, is the most demanding of vulgarity, this movie give us all. Shameless, painful, yet enjoyable. And the two actresses, so is the director, presented it neat and elegant. So, Handmaiden get solid praise from me.

[And yes, today, I am still waiting for another musical movie, that I heard tend to be classical one, La La Land. My kinda movie, with jazz and dance, so is the gorgeous couple, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, by Whiplash director, Damien Chazelle. Yeah! I am already binded to its soundtrack and some its musical videos features. But I guess it won’t be played in Indonesia’s theater, as theaters here is more attached to Star Wars and Harry Potter kinda movie. So, yeah, I will wait for the blu ray released – at least the pirate rip. Lol.]