Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive. When The Handmaiden was released in Korea this past summer under the title Ah-ga-ssi , an American friend who had seen it there told me about the deafening shock and discomfort it elicited among its conservative audience. She had seen it in the coastal town of Yeosu—an approximately four-hour drive from the more progressive and urban Seoul—where even slight public displays of affection may warrant a public slap on the wrist. But a lesbian erotic thriller? Oh boy. The Handmaiden, the latest from Old Boy director Park Chan-wook, is a lush period piece about a young Korean thief, Sook-hee Kim Tae-ri , who conspires with a con man named Count Fujiwara Ha Jung-woo by getting hired as a maid to the rich and beautiful Lady Hideko Kim Min-hee , a Japanese heiress whose inheritance has Fujiwara salivating.

The Handmaiden is the latest in a string of critically acclaimed lesbian films directed by male auteurs that reduce queer women's bodies to a beautiful spectacle. Warning: spoilers ahead. Sook-hee Kim Tae-ri and Lady Hideko Kim Min-hee are fully naked, facing each other while precariously balanced on their knees. Their beautiful, lithe bodies are arranged in perfect symmetry, just like the room around them.

For many Western audiences, the introduction to Korean cinema has been through highly popular K-dramas. These stories are often dramatic or comedic romances centered around a single couple. Another feature of K-dramas is they are very chaste, particularly by Western standards, and usually only go as far as a passionate kiss. Korean films however, are not always so innocent and there are many erotic dramas produced in South Korea.

His cult hit Oldboy includes a scene in which the actor Choi Min-sik eats a live octopus on camera. For all its narrative focus on the liberation of women at the expense of men, The Handmaiden struggles to depict female sexual desire outside the context of the male imagination. The Handmaiden is a sly, Russian-nesting-doll of a story, unfolding in three parts, from three different perspectives.