The Handmaiden

Park Chan-wook’s film comes from Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith, moved from Victorian Britain to Korea under Japanese occupation. The move brings something the novel lacks: two languages in the dialogue. Japanese lines are subtitled in yellow, Korean in white, and the film says so on screen at the start. Even Korean audiences read subtitles for the Japanese. Which language a character reaches for is part of the plot. Hideko, born Japanese, moves into Korean, while Kouzuki and Sasaki, both Korean born, insist on Japanese, reversing the usual victim and oppressor line up of colonial films. A 2020 study by Choi, Kim and Evans finds the colour system slipping where it counts: Fujiwara switches to Korean as he proposes the conspiracy, and the subtitle stays yellow. The moment an alliance forms, the subtitles hide it. The outside of Kouzuki’s house is the Rokkaen in Kuwana, Japan, built in 1913 to an English architect’s design; the library and staircase are sets. Production designer Ryu Seong-hee won the Vulcain Prize for the technical artist at Cannes for it. The film won Film Not in the English Language at the BAFTAs. A good fit if you will track a line’s language by the subtitle colour. Not for anyone who cannot sit through Kouzuki’s basement or Hideko made to read as a child.