YMMV / The Handmaiden

• Awesome Music: Hailed by Indiewire as having the best film score of 2016 even beating films that boast of stellar music like Oscar nominees La La Land, Jackie, and Moonlight (2016). Tracks of note include:
  • The scene where the aunt does her last reading is heartbreaking and one truly feels for Hideko as The Tree from Mt. Fuji plays. It's like passing the torch but on a very sorrowful tone.
  • Wedding is also powerful with its introduction in its flurry of clarinets that creates a sense of foreboding as Hideko and Sook-hee leave the mansion.
  • My Tamako, My Sook-hee is among the most powerful and THE most romantic film pieces to date. The scene that accompanies the score is ultimate catharsis and a big Fuck You to the patriarchy. Not to mention that it's a perfect love letter from one lover to her great love.
• Broken Base: Whether Park's attempt to have the lesbian sex scenes avoid catering to the Male Gaze worked. Laura Miller, of Slate, thought that the attempt failed, writing that the scenes display "visual clichés of pornographic lesbianism, [the actresses'] bodies offered up for the camera’s delectation." The New Yorker's Jia Tolentino disagreed, writing that "the women know what they look like, it seems—they are consciously performing for each other—and Park is deft at extracting the particular sense of silly freedom that can be found in enacting a sexual cliché."
• Complete Monster: Uncle Kouzuki is a depraved old pervert helping Imperial Japan to annex Korea. He obtains custody of his niece, Hideko, beating her, forcing her to read and act out pornography, all while intending to marry her and force himself on her. When his wife, another victim of his abuse, attempts to rescue Hideko, Kouzuki murders her and makes it look like a suicide. Kouzuki is also a vicious torturer, keeping a basement as a torture dungeon where he dissects people and keeps their remains as trophies, which he attempts to do to the conman Fujiwara. Kouzuki slowly carves off his fingers, pressing him for details of how Hideko was in bed, before deciding to take Fujiwara's manhood as a trophy.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The scene where Hideko tries to hang herself from the tree in the garden, but Sook-hee saves her and tearfully confesses her own part in the plan, whereupon Hideko confesses her own deception. It's all very anguished and heartfelt...until Sook-hee gets so enraged that she forgets to keep Hideko up and Hideko starts choking to death before Sook-hee realizes her mistake and frantically tries to save her.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: In the end of the film, Hideko and Sook-hee escape to Shanghai for their safety. However, we know that the Second Sino-Japanese War would soon make the area extremely dangerous. Even if they survived, anti-Japanese sentiment would make the area unlivable for Hideko. She would have to hope that she could pass as Korean or find somewhere else to live.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Enjoyed a popularity in the United Kingdom, even winning the award for Best Foreign Language Film at the BAFTAs, possibly for being a mix of Thriller and costume dramas. The fact that it was adapted from a British novel probably helps.
• Magnificent Bastard: Lady Izumi Hideko and Nam Sook-hee are a pair of young women who are initially brought into Count Fujiwara's conspiracy against one another, both deceiving all around them to send the other to an asylum while the other escapes. Upon falling in love, the two realize Fujiwara and Hideko's monstrous uncle Kouzuki are their true enemies, and hatch a plan to play them against one another. The two organize a breakout to get Sook-hee out from the asylum, escaping with all of Hideko's money, managing to see Kouzuki and Fujiwara dead and fleeing Korea for Shanghai, a free and happy couple together.
• Memetic Mutation: Many people on YouTube are remixing movie trailers in the style of this film's trailer.
• Narm: Sook-Hee wishes she could breast-feed Hideko. During a sex scene.
• The Woobie: Sook-Hee and Lady Hideko. Especially Hideko.