The story revolves around a young ‘fingersmith’ Sook-hee (Kim
Tae-ri) who is hired as a handmaiden (aka a maid) to a Japanese heiress Lady
Izumi Hideko (Min-hee Kim) but she has an ulterior motive but then to be fair,
so do most of the characters. Her aim is to persuade Hideko to marry Count
Fujiwara (Jung-woo Ha) who is actually a conman and whom she is working for.
Once he has married Hideko he says will commit her to an asylum and steal her
inheritance.
Things begin to go a bit tits up (if you excuse the rather
appropriate phrase) when the two women start making lustful eyes at each other seemingly
from the off. This could well be due to their complete isolation in their mansion
and also the complete lack of any heterosexual options, although this is obviously
a very un-PC thing to say. All the men are repulsive characters who would
rather get their sexual kicks at the ‘erotic’ book club ran by Hideko's unpleasant
Uncle Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong) where Hideko herself is required to be the narrator.
Previously it was her aunt, who went on to hang herself from a tree.
When Hideko asks Sook-hee how the Count would make love to
her once they are married Sook-hee demonstrates, albeit with an improvised girl
on girl version. The film doesn’t hold back in it’s coverage of this but it’s
all very tastefully shot and you find yourself admiring the fantastic
cinematography... among other things. It even seems almost educational, I mean
scissoring, does anyone really do that in real life? Please enlighten me.
So now the two lead female characters are in love or at
least in lust and there’s barely yet been a conversation between the two.
At this point, I should perhaps mention that the story is
divided into three parts and part two revisits part one from a different
perspective. This involves revisiting scenes as well as moving back and forth
through time. Which isn’t as confusing as I would have thought.
The first two parts were really clever but the third part got
a bit messy and the whole thing ends up a bit disappointing with a scene near
the conclusion that seemed unnecessarily violent and out of place with the rest
of the film.
Even so I enjoyed the film and if you love a good tale of
lesbian passion with your tales of jealousy and betrayal then this one’s for
you.
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