6/11/2023 0 Comments Fingersmith book![]() ![]() In Waters’ novel, the hand that works and caresses opposes the eye that mercilessly scrutinizes and the word that commands. But like the water in those reflecting pools, both are fundamentally unpredictable and unruly, always trying to overflow and slip away from under their would-be masters. Women and their sexual desires, for the men in this film, are forces to be constrained, controlled, and collected. In such a room, one of the two central characters in The Handmaiden, an heiress (Kim Min-hee) confined to a mansion in 1930s Japan, is made to dress in elaborate traditional clothes and read aloud from her uncle’s vast pornography collection to his creepy friends. ![]() Several of Park’s bad guys keep small, square, decorative pools of it under floor panels in their fancy houses, sliding back the panels to display their tame water to guests. It can act as a mirror, reflecting yourself back at you, but only when relegated to a condition of stasis. Water, after all, has long served as Park’s emblem for the maddening fluidity of images and desire. ![]() Only a cosmic Freudian could have cooked up the fact that Park Chan-wook’s new film, The Handmaiden, is based on a book by the Welsh novelist Sarah Waters. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |