In another time and place: The Handmaiden as an adaptation

This article considers the South Korean auteur director Park Chan-wook’s latest film The Handmaiden, which is the film adaptation of British writer Sarah Waters’s third novel Fingersmith. Transporting the story of love and deception from Victorian England to 1930s Korea under Japanese colonial rule, the film offers a compelling case of transnational or cross-cultural adaptation. In the process of cultural relocation, the film gives prominence to the ethnic identities and hierarchies in colonial Korea, and in recounting the unfolding lesbian love story between a petty-thief-disguised-as-maid and a noble lady, the film provides a spectacular, visual ‘translation’ of the novel’s approach to the story of same-sex desire. Despite all the changes the film makes to the original novel, the author Waters claims that the film is ‘faithful’ to her work. Taking her comments as a framework, the article explores the ways in which the film carries over the transgressive allure of the original story, while addressing the issues of history and identity in another time and place.