Director Park Chan-wook is best known for Oldboy, the cult revenge film that helped catapult Korean cinema into the international spotlight, and Snowpiercer, his post-apocalyptic train caper, both works beloved for their gritty, often graphic imagery. Yet his latest release, which comes out today, takes a surprisingly romantic tone. The Handmaiden is a twisting love affair between two women in occupation-era Korea that happens to be an exquisite portrait of ’30s Korean beauty.
Here, Kim Min-hee plays Lady Hideko, a young Japanese heiress who oozes fragility—the soft pink color dabbed on her lids, paired with a matching full lip; the loose strands falling from the intricate braided bun of that period. It is later, in front of Kim Tae-ri’s titular servant, Sook-hee, that the lady of the manor literally lets her hair down in a bit of nightly beauty ritual, looking languid and lovely in repose with a straight curtain of shining strands. Witnessing Tae-ri’s own shift from humble handmaiden with a bare face and austere single plait, to polished companion is equally compelling—the transformative effect of a sleek chignon, or an emerald earring dangling just so. And the image of the pair dressed in matching lace corsets, low braided buns, and petal-pink lips is so breathtakingly beautiful, it alone might be worth a trip to the theaters this weekend.
The post The Handmaiden Is an Exquisite Period Portrait of Korean Beauty appeared first on Vogue.
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