The Handmaiden

Have you ever gone to a film expecting to see one thing and then seeing something entirely different? I thought I was going to see The Handmaid’s Tale, a film adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopic look at a patriarchal power grab--so timely! Instead, I saw a Korean film about a woman trapped in a pornographic cult run by her uncle and about her escape with her lesbian lover. Lots of pornography read by a girl dressed as a geisha--to an appreciative audience of Japanese men--and lots of lesbian sex scenes. Some of the (very long) sex scenes were shown twice (the story was told in three parts, with a certain amount of repetition). Which got me thinking that the affair between the two women was meant to be as titillating to today’s male viewers as the readings of pornography were meant to be for the Japanese male elite who got hot and bothered as the geisha girl read in the 1930s.

I saw the film at the invitation of a friend and I wondered what she made of it. There was a torture scene where I just buried my head in my hands and she squealed. We both emerged a bit dumbstruck. It’s interesting how judgmental we become when we see sex portrayed in films. Is it pornography? Art? A sensitive portrayal of passion? Sexist? Male fantasy? Educational? I’m not a fan of long panting sex scenes of any sexual orientation, but that’s just me. The Guardian reviewer was bothered by the repetition (“patronising”), but gave the film the thumbs up b/c the women outsmarted the men.
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