Movies

Director Park Chan-wook on “The Handmaiden” and the “more romantic” extended version

Since my review of The Handmaiden was published, some of you have agreed with my take on the film while others couldn’t disagree with me more. Still, I can’t say I was expecting famed director Park Chan-wook to have read my review, but that’s exactly what I found out just minutes before meeting him.

Kim Tae-Ri, Park Chan-Wook, Kim Min-Hee

via Getty

And to my slight surprise, he did, in fact, agree with some of my more critical points. But, more importantly, we were able to have a frank discussion that provided a hell of a lot of insight into the film and his thought process. In just under an hour, there was much we spoke about, including his admiration for Sarah Waters and her approval of The Handmaiden, the extended version of the film many of us didn’t get to see, the women he consulted for the movie and, yes, his thoughts on the male gaze.

Warning: Spoilers ahead

AfterEllen.com: How long have you been familiar with the novel Fingersmith and what about it made you want to make this movie?

Park Chan-wook: Four years. It was the same case as with Oldboy where the producer, Syd Lim, he came up to me and recommended this book. He, in turn, had been recommended this book by his wife who had read it first. And while I was reading the book four years ago, I immediately fell in love with it even before I was finished. So much so that I went to look for all of Sarah Waters’ other books as well and read them all. I even went to visit Whitstable, which is featured in Tipping the Velvet.

AE: Have you watched the adaptations of her books that the BBC famously adapted?

PC: Just Fingersmith.

AE: The idea then to adapt this book but put an original spin on it, was that always your intention? Or knowing that the BBC already did it “by the book,” did that change things for you?

PC: It was kind of a choice that was made during my reading of the book, even before I finished the book, in terms of what kind of original spin I would take on the material. Or maybe it’s to do with my basic attitude towards treating original source material. I think that doing an adaptation “by the book” as it were is not the best way to respect the original source material. If you are adapting it into a different medium, which might have different characteristics, to shape the adaptation to best fit the medium is the proper way to respect the source material.

The basic attitude that I subscribe to in treating a source material is I treat it as an experience of reading and I base my filmmaking on my experience. I believe I have experienced something I have read if it’s something that I’ve registered in my head.

While I was reading Fingersmith, a thought came to my mind. As I was reading part two, where we have pages and pages of description about Maud’s childhood, reading through that I felt I really wanted to give to this little girl called Maud a happy ending. And by happy ending, I wanted Maud to acquire her love with Sue and also I wanted to give Maud a happy ending by having those men who were bad towards her have their comeuppance. While I was reading this book, I would compare myself as someone who would watch a TV soap opera and getting so involved emotionally and rooting for the hero and saying, “Oh the bad guy should be punished.” I could also compare myself to a Dickinson reader and rooting for a hero and hating the villain. I noticed how much I ended up responding to the story as a very pure, childish reader. It goes to say something about the strength of Sarah Waters’ writing to make her readers respond like that.

AE: Let’s stay with Sarah Waters for a bit. You’ve worked with adaptations in the past and you’ve mentioned respecting the source material but to do that you have to have your own original spin on it. I’m curious: did you meet with Sarah? Talk to her? Or is it your understanding that to be able to do this kind of work you do have to be somewhat distant from the writer of these original pieces?

PC: I don’t think it’s a very good idea for me to meet with the original writer, original author, and to receive guidance or advice on adapting the source material. And this is the case the more I admire the original author. Because I know myself to be not very strong willed. Especially when it’s the case where I’m faced with someone that I admire so much. Whatever the author would say, I would try and do as the author has advised. And it would limit my imagination and I would find myself clinging on to those words of the author. That’s why I think it’s the right thing to do to avoid a situation where I’m engaged in a conversation about how to adapt the source material. And as a result, I find myself more curious about the author’s reaction after the film is finished, which I had an opportunity to find out recently in a phone call with Sarah Waters. And I was so happy and pleased to hear that she had enjoyed seeing the film.

AE: To your knowledge, how is this film being received in South Korea? I recently spoke with a South Korean documentarian who told me the political and social climate there right now is quite homophobic.

PC: Well yes, Korean society overall tends to have that aspect. It has a lot to do with a great number of very fundamentalist Protestant Christians in Korea, a great number of which you may not have ever been able to imagine before. That’s why I was rather concerned at the beginning.

I’m fine with being criticized by those people. But, as a responsible filmmaker and a producer, it would mean disaster in terms of box office. That’s why I was worried. And because this film required a lot of budget for a Korean film. It was a period film and a lot of budget was required to bring back the 1930s. I was worried and I was thinking and thinking and I would try and encourage myself. I went through all this process and stuck through it and finished the film. And when it came to the time of release of the film, it was a bit bland in terms of—I didn’t come up against any fiery reaction against it. There was no protest against the film. So I was worried about nothing.

AE: You would say the theatrical run was quite successful domestically?

PC: In terms of domestic R-rated box office records, in the history of R-rated films in Korea it comes within top 10.

AE: Now your film is already quite lengthy, but if you felt that you could get away with making it longer, would you include more scenes where we see Sookee and Hideko connecting more emotionally? Or perhaps make such scenes that touch on that emotional connection longer? Or is it just that the way you tell an adaptation of Fingersmith is that you can’t give away too much of that? I know that I would’ve liked to see more such scenes. Was it a matter of not having enough time?

PC: I can only say it was for both reasons. Both in terms of the story, there’s a limit to how much you can show the audience of both characters getting emotionally connected, and also it’s screen time. It’s limited by screen time. The success at the domestic box office meant that I was allowed to have an extended version where I put 23 minutes more of footage, and most of that running time is going towards the emotional connection between the two characters actually.

AE: Is that extended version the version we saw at TIFF?

PC: No, it’s not. It’s something you might be able to see on a Blu-ray. That’s why I have people come up to me and say, “Well compared to the release version director Park, the release version was more of a thriller. The extended version seems like a romance.” When I hear people who have seen the extended version say that, I feel it’s a bit of an exaggeration when you say that. But it is true that there is more romantic elements certainly in the extended version.

Having said that, I’m a firm believer that the characters of Sookee and Hideko, they fell in love at first sight. That’s the romantic notion that I have about the two characters’ relationship. So if people say having watched the release version that their fiery development of emotions seems too rushed, if people say that about the relationship, I can’t find myself readily agreeing with them. Especially because the real attraction about the story, about the source novel I was reading, what’s really great about it is that here we are dealing with characters who if they feel drawn towards each other more and more, the more they find themselves feeling love for the other person, the more sense of guilt they end up feeling because of the situations they are in. So the bigger their love, the bigger their sense of guilt. This kind of paradox is something that I found to be greatly interesting and something that had to begin as soon as possible in the story.

AE: Does it bother you that people like me, that our reviews would be based off not the extended version, but the original release? And if you don’t care about reviewers, which is totally fine, how about audiences in general? That those outside of South Korea aren’t seeing the extended version, aren’t seeing this other side of the love story, that would probably color their perception.

PC: You never know until you’ve seen the film how your perception may change. I don’t believe one’s perception would change so much after having seen the extended version. Please note that I’m not referring to my extended version as a director’s cut. Someone might see it and find it to be very lengthy and boring. Probably a lot of the audience may think that, in my mind. But what this extended version is all about is actually for those people who have seen the release version, for them to find even more details to enjoy. It’s not really for, I don’t think, an audience who’s never seen the film to find the film through the extended version. It might be a burdensome engagement. And certainly, a film at this length would never be released as its first version. To release the extended version because of this reason, I believe that it would be a sort of backwards way of doing it. That’s why at TIFF audiences are finding the film for the first time as the release version.

AE: So, many queer women feel attached to Fingersmith the novel because of its lesbian relationship and the fact that it was written by a gay woman. As well, the BBC miniseries of the same name is a favorite amongst a lot of queer women. That said, would you say you made this film with the sensibilities of queer women in mind? Or is this very much a film you hope is a success with a broad audience?

PC: Well of course I had a more broad audience base in mind as I was making the film. But when I say “the broad audience,” in that boundary, in that group, I would, of course, include queer women as well. And as I was adapting the novel, I was working with my co-writer [Note: Chung Seo-kyung], who is a woman, and she and I would often seek the advice of one of her best friends, who happens to be a queer woman, to seek her advice on the sensibilities of queer women and check that what they are doing is not something that would be against the sensibilities of queer women during the scriptwriting stage.

AE: Personally, I can see how some people would look at the lesbian sex scenes included in the film and say, “I’m not sure who this was intended for. Was this actually choreographed potentially for a male eye?” That’s something I pointed out in my review. Do you disagree with that? If so, why?

PC: When it’s presented to me as an issue of a male gaze, I cannot deny that I myself am male. But I have to say that I have made efforts so that this film won’t be seen as a film that is made for the male eyes, as it were. Because even if it was say a queer woman who was the filmmaker making this film, who’s to say that she won’t present a female body in a beautiful way and who’s to say that she won’t depict these sex scenes and be honest about the excitement these characters feel and to portray these sex scenes in a realistic way.

Let’s just take the bed scenes for instance. It’s not just a sexual act where they’re just sweating through it. I believe it’s probably the sex scene with the most amount of dialogue in the history of cinema. The women would actually joke about what they are doing to each other verbally and they would express their emotions to each other. So it’s not just an act where the sexual desire is all it’s about, but it carries with it these intimate emotions they have towards each other and it’s not just about them panting and sweating. It’s certainly not intended to fulfill some sort of male voyeuristic pleasure. I tried to make sure that that wasn’t the case.

AE: Did you choreograph the sex scenes? Did you write that into the script? Your co-writer, what kind of feedback did you get from her? Was the queer woman you mentioned consulted at all? Was that all you, or was there a woman’s touch on that?

PC: The way I collaborate with my writing partner, who is a woman, you may not have known this, but ever since and including Lady Vengeance (2005), all my films I have collaborated on with this female writer. And it’s not a process where I have my part and give it to her. We sit literally together and actually share one computer and two keyboards. One person would put a comma and the other person would put a full stop. So it’s very difficult to distinguish which person has done which part of the writing. We ourselves often get confused as to what we’ve written. So much so that one line of dialogue, the first half may have been written by me and the second part may have been written by her. It’s more correct to say that all of the script was at the same time written by me but as well her. And when it comes to of course the sex scenes also, we had worked very much in this way. And her best friend, the queer woman, at every draft of the script, at every stage, she had been shown the script, including the sex scenes. She liked all that she had read. Especially with the scissors position that the two engage in. That queer woman had said, “Well this has to be in the film. Without the scissors position the film will fail to blend.”

And another sex scene is right at the end of the film in the cabin on the ferry. The act of using the bell, it is mentioned in one of the readings, right? In one of those pornography novels. Some people have pointed out to me why would they actually take cue from a pornography novel which she was forced to read. When we look at our real lives and how people live, even if somebody was able to escape oppression, it doesn’t mean that traces of the oppression somehow disappear altogether. It’s not as if you are formatting a hard drive. It’s not as if you are able to just with a click of a finger start from a blank page. Your new chapter in a new life away from oppression, it still has to start from somewhere and it starts from you who has that past experience. With that behind, even though she had been forced to take part in these readings, she’s able to use an element from that and use it for her own pleasure and her own way of taking care of her desires. And in doing so, I felt, my writing partner and I, that this is subversion.

This is inspired by the Sarah Waters ending actually. When Sue and Maud are reunited, Maud is actually writing an erotica herself. And I couldn’t figure it out. Why would she be writing erotica? This is what her uncle’s been forcing her to do all her life. Why would she engage in that sort of activity? And then I realized well she would do it on her own terms. She would write it out of her own volition and this is coming from her. This idea that Hideko when she was reading erotica that deals with the silver bell and when she was forced to take part in those reading sessions, it was an unpleasant thing for her to do, but if she’s using the silver bells as part of giving herself pleasure then it takes on a completely different meaning. And the idea that this kind of subversion is something that Sarah Waters, in the recent conversation that I had with her, she found to be very interesting indeed and she really liked it and she had seen the film twice. She agreed with my take on the subversion aspect of it.

AE: Finally, do you plan for any of your future films to also have LGBT themes? Are those kinds of themes and characters ones you’d like to revisit?

PC: Right now I don’t have any plans to make an LGBT-themed film, but who’s to say what’s going to happen in the future? No one knows. But I do have a good mind to deal with the theme again at some point in the future.

The Handmaiden is scheduled for release in the U.S. on Oct. 21.

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