AH-GA-SSI / THE HANDMAIDEN (2016)

Over-cooked and over-praised, Chan-wook Park (of OLDBOY fame) takes a pretty standard film noir setup: Conning the Con Man, and camouflages with artsy presentation and double-helix plot structure, pulling the rug out from under us not once, but twice. The problem is that characterizations have to perform backflips as a topsy-turvy plot shifts victim into 'perp,' revealing who the true master player really is. Same inconsistencies needed for the sick jokes Park likes to use for shock value. (And very sick/very funny they are, too!) The eponymous handmaiden has come to care for (and act as companion to) a wealthy, near cloistered heiress. No ordinary servant, the new girl is something of a Korean Artful Dodger, trained from youth as petty thief & pickpocket, now working the bigtime with a handsome confederate posing as a Japanese Count to woo fair heiress. So much money for the taking! Together, they hope to steal the docile heiress’s affections & bank account from infatuated Uncle (and erotic book collector), her longtime intended. But since no one is quite what they appear to be, things play out as a series of switchbacks & reverses. And sex, lots of sex. On the athletic side, a climatic lesbian session finds use for a vagina P.O.V. shot, producing more giggles than erotic heat. While the fooled me once/fooled me twice storyline runs out of steam (and surprises) long before the film wraps.

DOUBLE-BILL: Over @ 20th/Fox, John Stahl had Gene Tierney, Jeanne Crain & delirious TechniColor for this sort of thing in the infinitely superior (and 40 minute shorter) LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN/’44.