The Handmaiden (Agassi): An interview with Park Chan-wook

Tonight, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaid premiered at the BFI London Film Festival. The film, adapted from Sarah Waters’s The Fingersmith tells the story of a working class Korean girl who sets out to swindle an upper-class Japanese woman – and ends up falling for her. But the course of true love never did run smooth as both women begin to realise the other is not what she seems.

We spoke to director Chan-wook at the Embankment Garden’s BFI cinema about what made him want to transport a book set in Victorian England to Korea, and whether or not in his portrayal of female sexuality he was trying to break a taboo.

Tess Colley
Video: Kinga Kutermankiewicz