The Handmaiden is perversely erotic, viciously violent, narratively twisted, deceptively comedic, and beautifully icky.
We spoke with the South Korean auteur behind Oldboy about his twisted new film The Handmaiden and how he moulded the source material into something uniquely his own.
Dork Shelf talked to famed Korean director Chan-Wook Park (Oldboy) about where his desire to tell such dark stories springs from, why he selected Stoker for his North American debut, the casting process, his identifying with the work of Alfred Hitchcock, and his study of film criticism and philosophy.
If Hitchcock was still alive he very well could have made Stoker, but with corpse reanimation still just a beautiful dream, Chan-wook Park fills the portly silhouette nicely. That’s high praise indeed and thankfully both the man and the film deserve it.