The Handmaiden Review

The Handmaiden

I saw The Handmaiden last night. Chan-nook's film still has me thinking. A great emotion when a film stirs. 

The story is plotted upon from Welsh novelist Sarah Water's book Fingersmith. Water's novels are wonderful in their own right with period details that will keep that book in hands until the end.Chan-nook changes points in the adaptation, the story is loosely after the novel. It is set in Thirties Korea under Japanese colonial rule. The Handmaiden is a lesbian romance set as a dark crime thriller.Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) is a brooding heiress locked away in a off grid estate, a Japanese castle with and English architectural wing. Her evil uncle (played by Cho Jin-woong) plans to marry her to be able to buy more books. Yes, I said, buy more books. The library collection of hard backs and illustrated manuscripts is part I love. The narrative reveals that the collection focuses on sunga, Japanese sexual and dark illustrations.

Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo), a scoundrel without a penny plans to defraud Lady Hideko of her fortune. Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) a Dickensian thief with a heart (perhaps cliche). The grounds are spectacular. Chan-nook shares a landscape of rock gardens, blooming cherry and groves of dark pergolas. The film kaleidoscope of greens, ultramarine blue and white are jewels. Chan-nook uses Victorian themes from Waters. Characters wear masks to be English or Japanese. Social ranks are set in stone. Underneath the uncle and his friends who attend sexual readings are depraved. There's art theft, sadism and a dungeon with a hungry octopus. To touch the books Lady wears gloves. Emotions are held back at the dining table and in tuxedo. Underneath is a thriller. 

My son, home from college for the weekend, works on an essay about Japan in the Seventh Century. We spoke about privilege, power and Buddhism in the morning. Western education fails to show how Korean art and spiritualism influenced Japan. I was happy he is reading work he was not exposed to in California High School curriculum. We convinced daughter to take a trip to Korea this summer.Park Chan-nook is one of several great filmmakers from Korea.  I encourage you to see the film in a big theater, as the visual experience is lovely.

Through These Veins We Are Connected

Boundaries Bound  by Mulugeta Gebrekidan

Through These Veins

Anne Marie Ruff takes us on an adventure in the coffee highlands of Ethiopia. The bitter taste of death, sweet almond extract of true love and intrigue are wired together in this epic story.

Ruth and Zahara are two strong women searching for truth. They want to save those they care for from the tortured death by AIDS. A cure is within their very grasp.

Stefano, the Italian scientist, is plant collecting before the forest disappears. He meets a medicine man who has found katannii leaf extract can cure AIDS.

Life replicates fiction- I understand what it is to collect plants, having been a collector of roses and rare plants. Stefano’s passion for rescuing the secrets of the forest is romantic and true. The charming Stefano streams with life blood.

The topic of a cure for AIDS is timely. Timothy Ray Brown is the first person to have had HIV totally eliminated from his body. Will some plant that is burned or cut down hold the secret to something better than a “functional cure.”

Our oldest human relatives come from Ethiopia, a now country suffering with drought, deforestation and death. With one Medical Doctor for 100000 citizens, survival rates are low. Locals hold to superstitious beliefs that spirits and supernatural forces can cause bad fortune, and illness.

Ruff stands apart from preaching to us about Pharmaceutical Companies, corrupt governments or political action. “Pepsi and Coke should start a big political campaign,” Ruth says. Ruth speaks a profound idea.  Ruff’s writing flows gracefully showing the evil forces what they are.

There are passages where Ruff’s images are handsome and bitter as raw coffee, as in, “She wrapped both hands around her wine glass attempting to steady herself, to prevent herself from descending into the abyss of uncertainty.” As if the red wine, or liquid of the glass could save her fall.

Above the image of the beautiful paintings of Mulugeta Gebrekidan. He is an Ethiopian painter using mixed media and oil. His work expresses the same longing to save, to stir greatness without explaining.

Ruff inspires us to conserve this beautiful earth’s biodiversity without asking or waving a flag. “Think carefully about how you can stay true to your values-”

Through these veins we are all connected. Ruff’s novel is romantic, thrilling and uplifting. Read it and be changed.

Anne Marie Ruff Grewal lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two boys. Photograph courtesy of Anne

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