The Handmaiden

In Korea under Japanese occupation, a young pickpocket named Sook-hee is hired as a handmaiden to a sheltered heiress, Lady Hideko, as part of a swindler's scheme to marry the heiress and seize her fortune. As the con unfolds, desire and deception blur, and the two women's relationship overturns the plans of the men controlling them, including Hideko's tyrannical uncle.

The film is a layered study of desire, deception, and sexual awakening, in which power, looking, and being looked at are constantly reversed. It offers rich material on autonomy claimed against domination. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes in 2017, and is based on the novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters.