The Handmaiden
May 31, 2026
Presented by Grand Illusion Cinema. Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden is an ingeniously structured work whose interlocking narratives and tricky perspectival shifts, handled with apparent ease, make for an acerbic, comic, and often sultry spin on the old-dark-house mystery, taut with thrilling turnabouts and and SM restraints. Named by "The Big Picture" podcast as one of the 25 best movies of the 21st century.
This twisty, kinky, divinely decadent period thriller, set in a Japanese-occupied 1930s Korea that’s imagined with baroque flourish by set designer Ryu Seong-hee, follows a hired handmaiden (Kim Tae-ri) as she enters the service of a shut-in heiress (Kim Min-hee) and her elderly, dictatorial uncle, while at the same time pursuing an underhanded agenda unknown to her new master and mistress—until, that is, the women concoct a plan of their own to take care of the men who have been manipulating and controlling them.
“The Handmaiden is at once a superlative thriller and a deeply erotic character study, but it’s the intelligence, mordant wit and depth of characterisation that are the real turn-ons.” — Andrew Lowry, Empire
“The Handmaiden is a nearly flawless movie. Every frame, every movement of the camera, every performance feels perfectly calibrated for maximum effect.” — Emily St. James, Vox
- Director: Park Chan-wook
- Principal Cast: Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong, Kim Hae-sook
- Country: South Korea
- Year: 2016
- Running Time: 145 min.
- Language: Korean and Japanese with English subtitles
- Has Subtitles: Yes