The Handmaiden (2016 Movie)

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to Fetch the Smelling Salts. I'm Alice.

[00:00:13] And I'm Kim. And this is a podcast all about historical dramas from movies and TV shows to miniseries from every era and all around the world.

[00:00:22] It was so good to see you.

[00:00:24] Yes, in real life. So we met up last week.

[00:00:30] Yeah.

[00:00:31] In London.

[00:00:32] We went down to that London. So myself and our producer Helen went down to London and met up with Kim for the second episode of the show.

[00:00:40] Second Annual Independent Podcast Awards. And it was so much fun. We got to see some people that I had met last year that we have met throughout the last year of doing episodes and being guests and having guests on.

[00:00:52] We met some new friends. We were sitting next to the host of one of my new favorite podcasts called Bat Chat.

[00:01:01] Yes.

[00:01:02] Run by the Bat Conservation Trust. It's a really... I'm sorry. This has nothing to do with period dramas.

[00:01:09] But if you're interested in bats, Bat Chat is great. It tells you all about different bat habitats in the UK.

[00:01:17] And you can find out where you can do bat walks, which I really want to go on.

[00:01:22] Aside from me fulfilling my dream of talking to someone from Bat Chat.

[00:01:26] It was a lovely way to celebrate podcasting.

[00:01:31] And we did not win in our category, but we were the most fabulously dressed.

[00:01:38] We were. So everybody just go on the website, go look at the event photos and you'll spot us.

[00:01:45] We're pretty easy to spot.

[00:01:46] Yeah.

[00:01:47] The photographer loved us.

[00:01:49] They did. They did love us.

[00:01:52] So yeah.

[00:01:54] And special shout out to a podcast that we've mentioned and we used as a resource on our podcast in our episode on The Woman King.

[00:02:03] The podcast is called It's a Continent.

[00:02:05] And it's all about African history and politics and amazing work that's being done in Africa by African people.

[00:02:13] And they won not only in two separate categories, but they won podcast of the year.

[00:02:19] So congrats to them.

[00:02:20] Yes. Congrats to them.

[00:02:21] Oh yeah.

[00:02:22] And we got to meet them and they're so lovely.

[00:02:24] But that's not what we're talking about today.

[00:02:26] We're not in Africa today.

[00:02:27] We are not.

[00:02:29] We are in Korea as we cover The Handmaiden.

[00:02:34] This is a really, really special one for us.

[00:02:37] And it's also being released, I think, the day after my 40th birthday.

[00:02:41] I'm going to call this my birthday pick because I love this movie so much.

[00:02:46] And actually, when Kim and I first started this podcast, we had like a soft start, I guess you would say.

[00:02:54] What would you say?

[00:02:55] We started, we thought, let's see how we would do this.

[00:02:59] Let's pick a few movies to watch and let's record ourselves talking about them.

[00:03:04] And then we took a break when I got pregnant and was too sick to do anything.

[00:03:09] And then after having Alice Jr. bake and cheese, we came back and we knew what we were doing.

[00:03:16] And we've been perfect ever since.

[00:03:18] It's totally perfect.

[00:03:19] But in that first era of us kind of figuring things out, we watched Handmaiden and talked about it together.

[00:03:27] And so to come back and actually do it now as an episode is...

[00:03:32] Yeah, no, it's so fun.

[00:03:33] It's so great.

[00:03:34] Yeah.

[00:03:34] It's very exciting.

[00:03:35] And it gave us an excuse to watch it again.

[00:03:37] Yes.

[00:03:38] Okay, so let's get into the summary.

[00:03:41] Okay, okay.

[00:03:41] Okay.

[00:03:42] Okay.

[00:03:43] You ready?

[00:03:43] Okay.

[00:03:44] Yes.

[00:03:45] So the film, importantly, is split up into three different parts.

[00:03:50] First, we have one character, Suki's version, and then another character, Hidako's version.

[00:03:56] And then finally, the rest of the story.

[00:03:59] So we'll start with part one.

[00:04:02] In the town of Yunpo, Korea in the 1930s under Japanese occupation, a young woman called Nam Suki, played by Kim Tae-ri, leaves the orphanage where she works to go to the eccentric manor house of Kawazuki Noriaki.

[00:04:18] As usual, I'm going to apologize upfront for any weird pronunciations of names and places that I do in every language, including English.

[00:04:30] So feel free to write or send us a recording of how to pronounce things properly.

[00:04:35] We would actually really appreciate that.

[00:04:37] We love to be corrected on pronunciations.

[00:04:40] Anyway, Suki will be working as the lady's maid or handmaiden of Mr. Kozuki's niece by marriage, Lady Hidako.

[00:04:49] In a flashback, we learn that the orphanage where Suki grew up is a petty criminal operation run by her aunt Boksoon and a ragtag band of thieves.

[00:05:02] Woohoo!

[00:05:03] They look after orphaned and abandoned babies until the babies are big enough to be sold, essentially, to well-to-do Japanese families.

[00:05:12] And one day, a dapper man, played by Hong Joon-woo, comes into the orphanage and gives them the lowdown on his latest con.

[00:05:22] So the mark is none other than Mr. Kozuki, a former Korean interpreter who bribed his way into translating for high officials, helped the Japanese annex Korea, and got given a gold mine, a literal gold mine.

[00:05:42] He became a naturalized Japanese citizen, and he married the daughter of a fallen Japanese noble and adopted his wife's family name.

[00:05:51] And then he built this half-European, half-Japanese mansion and filled it with books and antiquities.

[00:05:58] And there he holds readings and auctions of rare books, but he loves all of his stuff way too much to actually sell it, so he has fakes created.

[00:06:11] And that's where the con man comes in.

[00:06:13] He's posing as Count Fujiwara, a Japanese man of noble birth and an expert forger.

[00:06:20] So I'm just going to call him the Count from now on.

[00:06:22] Mm-hmm.

[00:06:24] Kaozuki's wife died without having children, but he's raised her niece, whose mother died in childbirth, and she performs book readings.

[00:06:33] And she'll have her own fortune from her father when she marries, so the uncle wants to marry her, which is gross.

[00:06:40] Yes, so gross.

[00:06:41] So the Count's plan is to make Lady Hidako fall for him, marry her, and run away to Japan, snag her fortune, and then have her declared insane and imprisoned in a quote-unquote madhouse.

[00:06:56] Which is a word I'm going to use because that's what they use in the film.

[00:07:00] Mm-hmm.

[00:07:00] So Suki's job will be to act as her maid, called Tamako, to spy on her and facilitate this whole scheme.

[00:07:08] That's a lot of exposition up at the top, but you need to know this plan.

[00:07:13] On Suki's first night there, Hidako, played by Kim Minhee, has a nightmare and says her aunt hanged herself from the cherry tree outside the window.

[00:07:23] And Suki helps her sleep like she would one of the little babies in the orphanage.

[00:07:28] Here are some things about Hidako.

[00:07:30] She always wears gloves and she has like a zillion pairs.

[00:07:34] And although she's Japanese, she prefers to speak Korean because all the books her uncle makes her read are in Japanese.

[00:07:41] And she has to go to his library for reading practice every day.

[00:07:46] Uncle Kozuki, who is played by Cho Jun-wung, is a horrible man.

[00:07:51] But can I tell you something funny?

[00:07:53] The actor, I looked him up, he was only 40.

[00:07:58] He was only 40 years old when he played this role.

[00:08:01] So they have him in kind of a black mustache and beard and black hair in the flashbacks, like as a young man, a younger man.

[00:08:13] And they have him as a very old man.

[00:08:15] The whole time he's only 40 and he does look very funny.

[00:08:19] I think he's like a comedic actor.

[00:08:21] But in this, he is awful.

[00:08:24] He's fucking awful.

[00:08:26] He also wears black gloves and his mouth is stained black from licking his calligraphy brush.

[00:08:33] Defeating the black ink.

[00:08:35] And like...

[00:08:37] So the count is coming to visit the manor, ostensibly to make forgeries and teach Hidako painting, but really to enact his nefarious plan.

[00:08:46] And in our first gorgeous sensual scene, Suki gives Hidako a bath and files down a sharp tooth for her to prepare for the count's arrival.

[00:08:57] Can we talk quickly about how period dramas are full of homoerotic bathing scenes?

[00:09:02] No.

[00:09:03] Yeah.

[00:09:05] Already on this podcast, we haven't covered...

[00:09:08] I mean, we've covered a small percentage of the period dramas out there in the world.

[00:09:12] And maybe it's the ones that we're picking.

[00:09:14] It probably is the ones that we're picking.

[00:09:15] It's probably us.

[00:09:17] It's probably us.

[00:09:18] We're the common factor here.

[00:09:19] But we've got A Room with a View.

[00:09:22] The classic.

[00:09:23] Padmavad.

[00:09:24] Mm-hmm.

[00:09:26] Northanger Abbey.

[00:09:28] Oh, yes.

[00:09:29] Correct.

[00:09:29] And now this one.

[00:09:30] Well, Northanger Abbey is heterosexual bathing scene, but I'll, you know, whatever.

[00:09:34] I'll take it.

[00:09:34] He's got roughly sleeves, so that makes it homoerotic.

[00:09:38] What's that one?

[00:09:39] The Mexican one.

[00:09:41] The Dance of the 41.

[00:09:44] Yes!

[00:09:46] And now, so this is our fifth homoerotic bathing scene.

[00:09:50] If you count Northanger Abbey.

[00:09:53] Yeah.

[00:09:53] You gotta count Northanger Abbey.

[00:09:56] Because we have to...

[00:09:57] We also were totally perving on her, like her dream in the bathtub thing.

[00:10:02] Right.

[00:10:02] It's homoerotic because of our female gaze.

[00:10:05] Yes.

[00:10:05] Her naked back in the bath.

[00:10:08] Exactly.

[00:10:08] But I think this one, I'm not gonna put it above the splishy splashy watering hole bathing scene in A Room with a View.

[00:10:16] But it's a very close second for me.

[00:10:19] Okay.

[00:10:20] Yeah, yeah.

[00:10:20] Fair.

[00:10:21] So over the next few days, the count aims to seduce Hideko during their painting lessons, and Suki is meant to be helping, but she's having regrets.

[00:10:30] The women bond, talking about their mothers, and dressing and undressing each other.

[00:10:36] Hmm.

[00:10:36] Hmm.

[00:10:37] Suki has clearly developed feelings for Hideko, but she's still going through with the plan.

[00:10:43] Probably because she finds Hideko and the count kissing.

[00:10:50] That night, Hideko calls in Suki to sleep in her bed, and she says the count has proposed to her and wants to run away with her to Japan when her uncle goes away to visit his gold mine.

[00:11:02] Hideko says she doesn't know what men want in bed.

[00:11:05] So Suki shows her with a few sexy sex things.

[00:11:12] Hmm.

[00:11:12] Hmm.

[00:11:13] Hmm.

[00:11:13] After that, Suki doesn't want anything bad to happen to Hideko, but she's still going along with the plan, which seems to upset Hideko.

[00:11:22] So Hideko accepts the proposal.

[00:11:25] The uncle leaves, telling Hideko to remember the basement in this really ominous warning.

[00:11:32] Hmm.

[00:11:32] Hmm.

[00:11:33] The women run away in the night, meet the count, and sail off to Japan where Hideko marries the count in a temple.

[00:11:39] On the wedding night, Suki hears the couple consummating.

[00:11:43] They stay at an inn while the count secures Hideko's inheritance in cash in a big 1930s leather duffel bag.

[00:11:51] And Hideko dresses Suki up in fine Japanese clothes while she herself wears simple ones.

[00:11:58] Finally, two men from the madhouse come to interview Suki about her lady's sanity.

[00:12:04] And she says Hideko needs to be confined.

[00:12:07] But when they go to the madhouse, it's Suki who gets taken in.

[00:12:13] Ooh.

[00:12:14] Double twist.

[00:12:16] Yep.

[00:12:17] Now we're at part two, Hideko's version.

[00:12:20] As soon as Hideko came to her uncle's house as a young girl, uncle and the housekeeper were horribly cruel to her and her aunt.

[00:12:28] And by the way, the housekeeper, this is a Korean woman who is the uncle's first wife.

[00:12:35] I know.

[00:12:36] What the fuck?

[00:12:37] He kept on as a servant and still has sex with, apparently.

[00:12:42] Yep.

[00:12:43] Mm-hmm.

[00:12:44] It's like, no wonder she hates him.

[00:12:46] I mean, she hates Hideko, yeah.

[00:12:47] How gross can you get?

[00:12:49] And of course, she has to lash out on the wife for that.

[00:12:52] Yeah.

[00:12:52] Her aunt was the one doing the manuscript readings, which were all of antique erotica.

[00:12:58] And Hideko was trained to do the same in her reading lessons as a young girl.

[00:13:02] And when she was still young, her aunt hanged herself from the cherry tree.

[00:13:07] Or so she thought until her uncle proudly told her he'd killed her in the basement.

[00:13:14] And he'll do the same to Hideko if she tries to run away.

[00:13:17] We see Hideko as a grown woman performing erotic readings for small audiences of book buyers, including the count, and learn that these evenings include BDSM stuff like a whipping table.

[00:13:33] Mm-hmm.

[00:13:34] Which as a table looks like a really beautiful piece of furniture.

[00:13:38] Yeah.

[00:13:38] If you just like take the straps off, make it a nice massage table.

[00:13:43] I know.

[00:13:43] Yeah.

[00:13:44] I'd give that to my grandma.

[00:13:45] There's also a helpful wooden sex mannequin whom I've named Gerald.

[00:13:54] He's very unsexy, but he is the only male-identified character I feel bad for in this whole movie.

[00:14:02] Fair.

[00:14:04] My cousin's name is Gerald.

[00:14:06] Oh, I'm sorry, Gerald.

[00:14:10] He was probably, he's meant to be like a, for, for suits.

[00:14:15] Yeah.

[00:14:16] He's meant to be in a nice, like, tailor shop.

[00:14:19] He's in a haberdashers.

[00:14:21] He's, he didn't ask to be like, straddled and strung up by the neck.

[00:14:26] No, there was no consent given by Gerald.

[00:14:28] Poor Gerald.

[00:14:29] Gerald.

[00:14:30] Only good male character, Gerald the sex doll.

[00:14:33] It turns out the count did plan to seduce Hedeko for her money.

[00:14:37] But when he meets her, he realizes it'll never work because he says, quote, her eyes have no desire.

[00:14:44] That means her soul is dead inside.

[00:14:46] Because, you know, if a woman doesn't want your boner.

[00:14:50] I know, right?

[00:14:50] Does she even have a soul?

[00:14:52] Oh, God.

[00:14:54] So he makes her a proposition instead.

[00:14:56] He'll marry her, take her away, and let her live free in exchange for half her inheritance.

[00:15:03] But she's afraid her uncle will track them down and kill them in his murder basement.

[00:15:08] Also, what, what is it with rich people having murder basements and like murder?

[00:15:12] I know.

[00:15:13] Murder.

[00:15:15] What's the word I'm looking for?

[00:15:17] Like criminal lairs?

[00:15:18] Just like designated murder architecture.

[00:15:21] Yeah, well, you know, they like to compartmentalize things.

[00:15:24] Yeah, keep it in the shack.

[00:15:26] Keep it in the basement.

[00:15:27] Mm-hmm.

[00:15:28] It helps with cleaning, you know?

[00:15:30] Rich people have too much space.

[00:15:32] Yeah, true.

[00:15:33] Eventually, you're going to turn one of those rooms into a murder room.

[00:15:36] Mm-hmm.

[00:15:37] Therefore, eat the rich.

[00:15:38] Yes.

[00:15:39] To solve this problem, it's Hedeko's idea to have the count get her a new maid whom they can throw in the madhouse in Japan

[00:15:48] under her name.

[00:15:49] After the count officially proposes, we see this spicy love scene again.

[00:15:55] You know, the one where...

[00:15:57] Mm-hmm.

[00:15:58] Because, you know, we've got to see it twice.

[00:15:59] Oh, yeah.

[00:16:00] I wasn't mad.

[00:16:01] But we see more of it.

[00:16:02] And it's clear that Hedeko was never naive about sex, and she didn't need Suki to show her anything.

[00:16:10] I love that.

[00:16:12] I love that.

[00:16:12] I remember when we first talked about this film, we had this kind of discussion about,

[00:16:18] is this a feminist sex scene or is this something that's made for male gaze?

[00:16:23] Yeah.

[00:16:23] I have completely different opinions about that now.

[00:16:27] I think it is a really beautiful and pure love scene.

[00:16:30] I think it's clear that they're there for each other.

[00:16:33] Mm-hmm.

[00:16:34] But also, I personally just loved it so much.

[00:16:38] And I decided, you know, ask not for whom the ladies scissor.

[00:16:43] They scissor for me.

[00:16:45] Alice.

[00:16:46] Yes.

[00:16:49] I mean, you know, they're just two beautiful women, right?

[00:16:51] Why?

[00:16:52] You know, just don't complain.

[00:16:53] No.

[00:16:54] Nah.

[00:16:56] Also, I will also not complain if two beautiful men were gonna, you know, have a sex scene in front of me.

[00:17:01] Great.

[00:17:02] Yeah.

[00:17:03] I feel like we wouldn't be having the same kind of hand-wringing considerations about whether it's too portographic or whether it's through the male gaze.

[00:17:11] Yeah.

[00:17:11] You know, I think this scene in particular, it's made really clear that these two women are there for each other and nobody else.

[00:17:19] Mm-hmm.

[00:17:20] But also, the audience is really benefiting.

[00:17:24] Mm-hmm.

[00:17:24] If the audience is Kim and moi.

[00:17:29] Also, I know we're gonna talk about sex scenes.

[00:17:33] Mm-hmm.

[00:17:33] And the making of sex scenes a little bit later.

[00:17:35] But Keith wondered just, like, the mechanics of it because we talked a little bit when we watched The Favourite about how Olivia Colman had stuck a sponge.

[00:17:47] Oh, yeah.

[00:17:49] Down her drawers.

[00:17:50] Yeah.

[00:17:51] During this love scene that she had with Emma Stone.

[00:17:53] And so Keith was wondering, in the scissoring scene, is there something, like, is there a squish mellow maybe between them?

[00:18:00] Something like a stuffy, some kind of squish animal?

[00:18:03] And if it is a squish mellow, what kind?

[00:18:07] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[00:18:08] Because as I've now been very, very educated by my nieces, there are many different kinds of squish mellows.

[00:18:13] We currently have a 40-centimeter tall scorpion squish mellow.

[00:18:20] Oh, fun.

[00:18:21] Thank you to my friend Laura.

[00:18:23] I know.

[00:18:24] I now want a squish mellow myself.

[00:18:25] What kind of squish mellow?

[00:18:26] If you were doing a scissoring scene, what kind of squish mellow would you have there?

[00:18:32] Hmm.

[00:18:33] I think a fruit.

[00:18:34] A fruit?

[00:18:35] Oh, a peach.

[00:18:36] A peach?

[00:18:37] Oh, that'd be nice.

[00:18:37] That kind of cute little, yeah, you know, like squishy sound.

[00:18:40] Hmm.

[00:18:40] Yeah.

[00:18:41] Cute little peach.

[00:18:42] We've cracked it.

[00:18:42] What about you?

[00:18:43] I mean, peach was my idea.

[00:18:45] Oh, yeah.

[00:18:45] Oh, yeah.

[00:18:46] Yeah.

[00:18:47] Back to the summary.

[00:18:48] Scissoring with a peach.

[00:18:49] Okay.

[00:18:51] And like Suki, Hidako starts catching real feelings and she despises the count and even tries to call the whole scheme off.

[00:19:01] But the count convinces her that Suki would not do the same for her.

[00:19:05] Suki even tells Hidako to marry the count.

[00:19:08] So Hidako despairs and she tries to hang herself from the cherry tree.

[00:19:14] But at the last minute, Suki catches her and Suki confesses everything.

[00:19:20] And Hidako confesses that she always knew Suki's real identity and that she's the one being tricked.

[00:19:25] So now it's all out in the open and they decide to team up and write to Suki's aunt, Boksun, in the orphanage to help in their new scheme.

[00:19:38] Onto part three, the rest of the story.

[00:19:41] So once Uncle Kaozuki leaves, Hidako takes Suki into his library to show her the stuff that he's been having her read since she was a child.

[00:19:53] And Suki is aghast.

[00:19:56] So she runs around, pulling books and scrolls off the shelves, tearing and stabbing them and throwing ink on them and tossing them into those little ambiance pools of water and adding some more ink.

[00:20:11] And then they smash that snake statue that's in there.

[00:20:15] Oh, yes.

[00:20:15] The snake statue that would tell you where the border is.

[00:20:19] Like you're not supposed to step beyond that.

[00:20:20] Yeah.

[00:20:21] The snake of knowledge.

[00:20:22] Oh.

[00:20:24] And perviness.

[00:20:26] They run off and meet the count, planning to go along with his original scheme.

[00:20:31] In Japan, once Suki is in the madhouse, the count confesses to Hidako that he loves her and proposes that the two of them go to Russia to live in a grand manor near Vladivostok and get married under the name Nam Suki.

[00:20:47] Once the real Suki dies in the madhouse, which he just assumes is going to happen.

[00:20:53] Meanwhile, Suki only has to make it through lunch at the madhouse before Auntie Bak-sun and the orphanage crew set the madhouse on fire and spring Suki by dressing her in amazing 1930s Japanese firefighter gear.

[00:21:13] Oh, that was so cute.

[00:21:18] It looked heavy.

[00:21:20] It was amazing, though.

[00:21:23] It was amazing, though.

[00:21:23] Just wet, thick leather pieces with goggles.

[00:21:27] Meanwhile, Hidako spikes the count's wine with opium tincture to make him pass out.

[00:21:32] And then she takes all the money in a duffel bag and goes to meet Suki at their rendezvous spot.

[00:21:38] The count wakes up without trousers, and we see his butt, to some thugs who tie him up and take him back to the uncle.

[00:21:47] And Hidako has sent a letter to the uncle explaining that the count is a con man.

[00:21:52] So what does uncle do?

[00:21:54] He takes him down to that basement and he tortures the count in revenge for all of his messed up manuscripts.

[00:22:00] That seems to be the thing he's most...

[00:22:03] He's like, fuck you, my manuscript's got destroyed.

[00:22:05] Now I'm gonna fuck up your fingers!

[00:22:08] So uncle says he's arranged so that no two girls traveling together can leave Kobe, the port that they're going out of.

[00:22:17] But with the help of the orphanage crew, Hidako has altered her uncle's passport and is traveling with Suki as Mr. Go-Pan-Dol.

[00:22:25] And they change their tickets at the last minute to sail to Shanghai instead of Vladivostok.

[00:22:34] In the basement, uncle wants to know all about the count's wedding night with Hidako.

[00:22:40] Gross.

[00:22:41] I know, right?

[00:22:42] And the count weaves him a story, but we learn that they never actually consummated.

[00:22:49] So she's a gold star lesbian.

[00:22:52] Good for her.

[00:22:52] Yeah, she is.

[00:22:53] The count also gets uncle to let him smoke a couple of his blue cigarettes, which are poisoned with mercury, so they both die.

[00:23:04] On the boat to Shanghai, our heroines are finally free, and they celebrate with some special jingle bells on a lesbian sexing couch.

[00:23:16] Woohoo!

[00:23:16] The end.

[00:23:17] Yay!

[00:23:18] That was great.

[00:23:19] I want that couch.

[00:23:21] I mean, forget the fainted couch.

[00:23:23] That was absolutely designed for lesbian sex and nothing else.

[00:23:28] Because he had like, yeah, two, yeah.

[00:23:30] Yeah.

[00:23:30] Last thing, those special jingle bells.

[00:23:33] Mm-hmm.

[00:23:34] So those bells are based on very old kind of sex toy called Benoit balls.

[00:23:40] Mm-hmm.

[00:23:41] And these, I think, are actual jingle bells that they're using.

[00:23:45] Mm-hmm.

[00:23:45] The Benoit balls are metal balls that have a little ball bearing inside.

[00:23:50] Mm-hmm.

[00:23:50] So it tingle, tingle, tingles around.

[00:23:52] You can get them at Love Honey for $9.99.

[00:23:55] Mm-hmm.

[00:23:56] And we're going to get them for everybody on the Fetch the Smelling Salts team this Christmas.

[00:24:01] Yay!

[00:24:02] Look forward to that.

[00:24:03] All right.

[00:24:04] Well, I'll just cancel the order I was about to make myself.

[00:24:07] There we go.

[00:24:21] Okay.

[00:24:22] So the movie, right, was inspired by a 2002 novel called Fingersmith.

[00:24:28] Finger what?

[00:24:30] Fingersmith.

[00:24:30] That's a bit on the nose.

[00:24:32] I know, right?

[00:24:33] The Fingersmith.

[00:24:34] By Welsh writer Sarah Waters.

[00:24:37] So I read the book.

[00:24:39] Yeah.

[00:24:39] Mm-hmm.

[00:24:40] And so the book was set in Victorian Britain.

[00:24:43] Right.

[00:24:44] And yeah.

[00:24:45] So when the director, Park Chan-wook, he is the director and the co-writer.

[00:24:50] He wanted to adapt it and he put it under, you know, the setting was changed to Korea under

[00:24:56] the Japanese colonial rule and it was set in the 1930s.

[00:25:00] So for those of you who don't know, from 1910 to 1945, which is at the end of the Second

[00:25:06] World War, Korea was part of the Japanese Empire.

[00:25:10] And the name was, again, I'm sure I'm going to pronounce it wrongly.

[00:25:14] It was called Chozen, which is the Japanese reading of Chozen.

[00:25:17] Anyway, so some facts about that.

[00:25:21] It was nominated for the highest award at the 2016 Cairns Film Festival.

[00:25:25] It didn't win in the...

[00:25:27] Much like us nominated for the most prestigious award of film and TV category, but...

[00:25:34] Totally.

[00:25:35] Yeah.

[00:25:35] We're just like Handmaiden.

[00:25:37] Just like Handmaiden.

[00:25:39] Yeah.

[00:25:39] It did win at the British Academy Film Awards.

[00:25:44] It won for Best Film Not in the English Language.

[00:25:48] And so I was looking up the director, you know, he's a very famous Korean director.

[00:25:52] In 2013, he directed his first English language film called Stoker.

[00:25:57] And it's some sort of like psychological thriller.

[00:26:01] And, you know, how it kind of comes back round is that...

[00:26:05] So it was written by Wentworth Miller.

[00:26:07] He's the prison break guy, right?

[00:26:10] Wentworth Miller.

[00:26:11] Funnily enough, actually, on Halloween itself, which just passed, I was watching the very first

[00:26:17] pilot episode of Ghost Whisperer.

[00:26:20] And he was in there.

[00:26:21] I was like, hey!

[00:26:22] It's him.

[00:26:23] And also...

[00:26:25] So anyway, the movie Stoker was written by Wentworth Miller.

[00:26:29] And it starred Mia Wasikowska, callback to our Crimson Peak episode.

[00:26:35] Oh, wow.

[00:26:36] And Matthew Goode, callback to our Imitation Game episode.

[00:26:40] And Belle.

[00:26:40] Yeah.

[00:26:41] It's all connected, baby.

[00:26:43] These period drama people, they are just a web.

[00:26:46] Yeah, I know.

[00:26:48] Some random funny trivia I found out that...

[00:26:51] You know, there's a bit where Hideko is supposed to be learning how to do art, right?

[00:26:56] And then she draws Suki.

[00:26:58] But it's so bad.

[00:27:00] And I was like, I sympathized with her.

[00:27:02] I have absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever.

[00:27:05] God has given me many, many gifts, okay?

[00:27:08] Fine art.

[00:27:09] It's not one of them.

[00:27:10] But so apparently, no one in the crew was like me.

[00:27:15] See, that's why they should have had me on the crew.

[00:27:17] Because no one in the crew could draw that badly.

[00:27:20] That's what it said, you know, I'm BB.

[00:27:22] So it was drawn by some crew member's friend outside the movie crew.

[00:27:28] So they were basically called upon a Kim.

[00:27:30] They were like, can you draw this badly?

[00:27:32] And they were like, dude, I got your back.

[00:27:34] No, I call bullshit on that.

[00:27:35] Everyone making that movie was just too ashamed.

[00:27:39] Like, I'm sorry.

[00:27:40] Like, I'm sorry.

[00:27:41] I can't draw badly.

[00:27:42] I can only draw really good through.

[00:27:44] I know, I just can't.

[00:27:44] Even if I try.

[00:27:46] Yeah.

[00:27:47] Yeah, that's bullshit.

[00:27:48] I know.

[00:27:48] I know.

[00:27:49] I just laughed at that.

[00:27:50] I was like, damn you.

[00:27:51] Fuck you.

[00:27:52] You can, come on.

[00:27:54] They were, as usual, I love looking for anachronisms.

[00:27:58] So I mean, the ones I'm listing, I didn't spot them myself.

[00:28:01] Obviously, I wasn't watching that closely.

[00:28:03] But there's other things that people have spotted.

[00:28:05] So to count, he uses a propane gas lighter.

[00:28:10] But that was not yet invented at that time.

[00:28:14] And yeah.

[00:28:15] And in the basement torture room, right?

[00:28:18] You know, the bit where you see all like the bits,

[00:28:20] all the penises and octopus and stuff.

[00:28:24] Oh God, yeah.

[00:28:25] Yeah.

[00:28:25] The penises are circumcised.

[00:28:28] Apparently, circumcision did not become a standard practice in Korea

[00:28:31] until later in the century.

[00:28:33] That's the anachronism you found?

[00:28:34] His jars of penises are too circumcised to be historically accurate.

[00:28:41] Mm-hmm.

[00:28:42] I mean, and I was saying, I was thinking,

[00:28:44] maybe he just got them imported.

[00:28:46] You know, he's a collector, right?

[00:28:48] He's got them imported.

[00:28:52] This is the kind of shit I look for.

[00:28:54] Why are we justifying this?

[00:28:57] What is this?

[00:29:02] Check out them.

[00:29:04] I don't know.

[00:29:05] Hey, although I was like, you know, good point.

[00:29:07] Good point.

[00:29:08] Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

[00:29:10] Yeah.

[00:29:11] It's like circumcised.

[00:29:12] Let me check.

[00:29:13] I'm sorry.

[00:29:13] What was circumcision?

[00:29:14] Can I just stop you?

[00:29:16] Is the next thing on your list, like, he's got an octopus in a tank,

[00:29:20] which he probably used for sex, but actually at that time in Korea,

[00:29:24] they would have used a different species of sex octopus.

[00:29:27] Yeah.

[00:29:27] Didn't you know?

[00:29:28] They actually use squid.

[00:29:30] Yeah.

[00:29:30] It's different.

[00:29:31] Yeah.

[00:29:32] Okay.

[00:29:32] No, no, no.

[00:29:33] The next one is good.

[00:29:34] The next one's good.

[00:29:34] Okay, okay.

[00:29:35] I mean, the next one is something, you know, we talked about already.

[00:29:38] Well, we talked about the first time you and I discussed this, right?

[00:29:41] The fashion, you know?

[00:29:43] Because the style of clothing, right?

[00:29:45] It's very kind of like Edwardian, late Victorian kind of stuff.

[00:29:49] But if you think about it, this was the 1930s.

[00:29:51] This is not what women would be wearing, like the corsets and stuff.

[00:29:55] I just assumed that it was like a, you know, oftentimes you'll have cultures borrowing from each other,

[00:30:02] but borrowing from maybe a different period.

[00:30:05] But I thought maybe they were doing that.

[00:30:07] Like it was fashionable in the 30s to dress like this in Japanese occupied Korea.

[00:30:12] I let it go for that reason.

[00:30:14] Yeah.

[00:30:14] But you're right.

[00:30:15] It is Edwardian dress.

[00:30:16] It's definitely not like a Western.

[00:30:18] When they're dressed in, at least the women, when they're dressed in Western style,

[00:30:22] it's very of like two decades prior.

[00:30:24] I couldn't find anything where the director talked about, you know, the choice of this.

[00:30:29] But I was thinking that when I first watched it and realized that, oh yeah, this is a bit off.

[00:30:34] I thought that maybe it was kind of like an homage to, you know, the original text,

[00:30:40] where it was set in late Victorian England and stuff like that.

[00:30:43] So I'm like, yeah, you know, maybe I'll let it go.

[00:30:46] And it's fun, right?

[00:30:47] I like clothes like that.

[00:30:49] Okay, last bit.

[00:30:50] So when Hideko looks at her watch after giving the opium, apparently it's a Seiko Solar watch.

[00:30:57] And it says so on the face.

[00:30:59] So I am now going to rewatch the movie and I'm going to pause at that scene to check it.

[00:31:04] Okay, again, please note, this is, I've not checked any of these myself.

[00:31:08] I've not checked whether the penises are circumcised.

[00:31:10] I will go back and let you know.

[00:31:12] I've not checked whether the Count has used a gaslighter, although I do remember that.

[00:31:16] I'm pretty sure he did.

[00:31:17] And I do not know whether it really was a Seiko Solar watch.

[00:31:21] I found all this after watching, re-watching the movie.

[00:31:27] So speaking of the book, there were some key differences, right?

[00:31:32] I'm not going to, you know, go into my whole literary spiel, but I just found it interesting.

[00:31:36] Again, this is based on the book.

[00:31:39] And I think, again, I read somewhere that after the screenplay was written, they did show it to Sarah Waters, who liked it, but said, you know, maybe it's best that you say this is based on Fingersmith or something like that.

[00:31:52] And at this point, there had already been an adaptation of her book called Fingersmith, which was a series, wasn't it, on BBC?

[00:31:59] Yes.

[00:32:00] So we both watched that.

[00:32:02] And that was quite true to the book, wasn't it?

[00:32:04] I love it, though.

[00:32:06] I absolutely, I, it's my thing.

[00:32:09] I love it when you have other cultures who make adaptations of either famous texts or any texts whatsoever.

[00:32:19] Absolutely.

[00:32:19] There's a lot of talk about this new Pride and Prejudice adaptation that's being made now as of, you know, when we're recording this episode.

[00:32:28] I think it's brought out a lot of discussion about how brilliant would it be if you just took the story of Pride and Prejudice and put it in any other kind of context.

[00:32:38] We've already had Pride and Prejudice, the Bollywood film, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

[00:32:45] I mean, seeing how successful the story is as, you know, inserted into those kind of settings, those kind of genre settings.

[00:32:53] And so to have an adaptation like that, I would have a Pride and Prejudice or any Jane Austen novel adapted by basically any culture.

[00:33:02] As long as it had that, the dynamics that are necessary, which seem to be universal.

[00:33:10] Yeah.

[00:33:10] And to be honest, like one of my favorite movies, and I used it a lot when I was teaching, is Throne of Blood by famous Japanese director Kurosawa.

[00:33:21] I really think we should cover it at some point.

[00:33:24] It's like a samurai thing, but it's basically a...

[00:33:27] It's Macbeth.

[00:33:29] Oh!

[00:33:30] It's brilliant.

[00:33:32] And personally, I think it's the best adaptation of Macbeth like I've ever seen.

[00:33:37] But anyway, sorry.

[00:33:39] That was...

[00:33:39] I digress.

[00:33:40] Coming back to the book and the movie.

[00:33:43] So in Fingersmith book, the girls actually betray each other.

[00:33:47] They're not in cahoots.

[00:33:48] It's that it is in that scene, you know, where they like, they tell each other the truth.

[00:33:52] Which is...

[00:33:53] Oh, that scene was hilarious, right?

[00:33:54] She's like, she's like holding Hidako up.

[00:33:57] Suki's like, ah!

[00:33:58] And then she kind of like, let's, you know, let's loose at some point.

[00:34:01] And Hidako's like, no!

[00:34:02] I'm going to die!

[00:34:03] Yeah, it's a weird scene to insert humor into, but it works for some reason.

[00:34:08] It works.

[00:34:08] Like having this big heartfelt confession while Suki is literally holding up Hidako so that she can't hang herself from this tree.

[00:34:16] So they didn't have that.

[00:34:18] They both actually betray each other.

[00:34:20] But they do kind of forgive each other.

[00:34:22] And the book deals with that.

[00:34:25] And most importantly, the ending is so different, right?

[00:34:30] In the ending, there's this whole bit about the aunt.

[00:34:34] Suki's, you know, quote-unquote aunt, right?

[00:34:37] Who kind of raises her in that little band of thieves and orphanage and stuff.

[00:34:40] And it's this bit where we find out actually that the aunt is a real biological mother of Hidako.

[00:34:50] And she had set the whole thing up so that she would be able to get Hidako back and stuff.

[00:34:58] And anyway, the aunt kills the count and is hanged.

[00:35:02] And then it's also kind of like a callback to where Suki was told that her mother was hanged at the start.

[00:35:10] So it was a little bit more convoluted.

[00:35:13] But the director, he didn't want that, right?

[00:35:15] He basically said straight off the bat, like he wanted a more tied up kind of narrative.

[00:35:20] And he wanted a clearly happy ending.

[00:35:23] Which I did.

[00:35:24] Deeply satisfying.

[00:35:25] Satisfying.

[00:35:26] Yes!

[00:35:27] Very, very satisfying, you know?

[00:35:29] And again, watching the movie, again, and see the book and stuff.

[00:35:32] But specifically you see in the movie, it's this whole thing about multiple points of views

[00:35:36] and unreliable narrators and certain themes of like the woman being put in the madhouse

[00:35:43] for inheritance, etc, etc.

[00:35:45] And his deception here and there.

[00:35:48] Again, it's a lot of themes, a lot of similarities with The Woman in White.

[00:35:51] Yeah.

[00:35:52] Again, one of the books that you and I both love and which we will definitely cover an adaptation of it

[00:35:59] very soon.

[00:36:00] So listen up, listeners.

[00:36:02] Okay.

[00:36:03] All right.

[00:36:03] Kim's literary nerding ending.

[00:36:06] So just a few bits about the LGBTQIA elements.

[00:36:12] So apparently during the script writing stage, the director Park, he was a co-director,

[00:36:17] he wrote with Chung Seo Kyung, and they sought the advice of one of Chung's best friends,

[00:36:22] who was a queer woman, to kind of like talk about sensibilities, especially with the love scenes.

[00:36:28] And what I found interesting was that in the book, sorry, I did say I lied.

[00:36:34] I lied.

[00:36:35] I lied.

[00:36:35] I lied when I said my literary nerding thing was done.

[00:36:40] It's not.

[00:36:41] Anyway, in the book, The Count is just known as Gentleman.

[00:36:45] Okay.

[00:36:45] He's very gay coded.

[00:36:49] That's interesting because he's incredibly aggressively straight.

[00:36:53] Exactly.

[00:36:54] Which I thought it was so interesting.

[00:36:56] And I thought maybe they didn't want to do that to kind of like take the, it felt that

[00:37:02] there was a decision that was made to focus the gay elements on the two women.

[00:37:08] So I didn't mind that so much.

[00:37:10] So speaking of the two women, there were steps being put in place to make sure the actresses

[00:37:16] were comfortable at the time that the sex scenes were being filmed.

[00:37:22] There was only female crew members and the scenes were filmed with a remote control camera.

[00:37:28] So aside from someone holding the boom mic, which is a female crew member, it was just

[00:37:33] remotely filmed.

[00:37:34] All the male crew members told to just leave, had a day off.

[00:37:37] They even had like a little like resting area for the women, which is basically the bathroom

[00:37:43] set.

[00:37:43] And then they shot the sex scenes earlier on just to kind of get it out of the way, you

[00:37:50] know, so you wouldn't be thinking about it and stressing about it.

[00:37:53] And it was quite sweet actually that apparently Kim Pei-ri, you know, she was quite insecure

[00:38:00] and stressed about it.

[00:38:02] But her co-star, Kim Minhee, she said that she really helped her along and that the two

[00:38:09] women had a really good relationship on set.

[00:38:12] Oh, that's really great.

[00:38:13] That's really good.

[00:38:14] Yeah.

[00:38:15] You know, like women helping women, you know, and yeah, there was, I liked that.

[00:38:20] And I think I read a few interviews where, you know, they both talked about how they both

[00:38:24] felt very comfortable doing the scenes with each other.

[00:38:27] This is something we think about often because we like a spicy scene in a period drama, but

[00:38:32] you don't always have a director like Park Jan-wook to really take consideration and take steps

[00:38:39] to make sure that the performers are comfortable.

[00:38:43] But nowadays it's becoming more common to have an intimacy coordinator there.

[00:38:49] And I would love to learn a bit more about that role.

[00:38:54] Yeah.

[00:38:55] But I think that's a really good, I think it's a shame that it's taken this long for that

[00:39:01] to become a standardized person.

[00:39:04] Yeah.

[00:39:05] On a film.

[00:39:06] Yeah.

[00:39:06] But I like to hear how much like we like to hear how animals are taken care of in the

[00:39:12] film.

[00:39:12] We talk about, it's good to hear that people were made comfortable in these sex scenes.

[00:39:18] Yeah.

[00:39:18] So my last bit is, I'm just going to kind of talk a little bit about the Japanese erotic

[00:39:24] art, you know?

[00:39:26] So that's in itself, I felt that's a character somewhat, you know?

[00:39:31] Yes.

[00:39:32] Yes.

[00:39:32] I'm sorry.

[00:39:33] I'm a literary person.

[00:39:35] So the Japanese erotic art is, if we're thinking of it as a character, it's sort of

[00:39:39] a bad guy because it's associated with this pervy uncle and all of these pervy men who

[00:39:46] are the source of abuse for Hidako.

[00:39:50] And the fact that she's being exposed to all of this stuff at such a young age is the form

[00:39:55] of abuse.

[00:39:56] But the art itself.

[00:39:58] The art itself isn't bad.

[00:39:59] So yeah, that's the thing.

[00:40:00] It was interesting because it's as if the art itself was also being abused, you know?

[00:40:05] It was being abused as something lewd and horrible when in and of itself, this is an art form, you

[00:40:13] know, which I was very interested in.

[00:40:15] I was reading up about it.

[00:40:16] So in part one, right, you have this, I think you have a bit of a scene of this painting with

[00:40:22] like this woman of the octopus, there's two octopuses.

[00:40:25] Yes.

[00:40:25] Octopuses?

[00:40:26] Octopi?

[00:40:27] I believe it's octopuses.

[00:40:29] Octopuses.

[00:40:29] Okay.

[00:40:29] Yeah.

[00:40:30] There you go.

[00:40:30] So it's actually, it's a real piece of art.

[00:40:34] It's very famous.

[00:40:35] It's called The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife by Hokusai.

[00:40:39] The wave?

[00:40:39] Who is the famous, you know, the wave guy.

[00:40:41] Yeah.

[00:40:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:40:45] So in part two, right?

[00:40:47] I love, sorry.

[00:40:48] I love knowing that Hokusai, the creator of the wave and all of these lovely Japanese works

[00:40:53] of art that, you know, it's like Mount Fuji and some octopus porn.

[00:40:59] It's so pure.

[00:41:01] It's so pure.

[00:41:01] It is.

[00:41:01] And actually a lot of people were doing that.

[00:41:03] A lot of these woodcut artists because it was a lot more lucrative.

[00:41:08] I went around this little rabbit hole reading all about this.

[00:41:12] Anyway, the second thing, the second real life reference of things is where Hideku's aunt,

[00:41:18] she's reading an excerpt from Jinping Mei, which is actually The Plum in the Golden Vast,

[00:41:24] which is a Chinese erotic classic.

[00:41:26] And that's actually seen as one of the great works of Chinese literature, along with like

[00:41:34] Journey to the West and all of that.

[00:41:35] So anyway, this Japanese erotic art is called shunga and it's a form of ukiyo-e, which is

[00:41:43] a woodblock print art.

[00:41:46] And again, so you have a lot of ukiyo-e artists, right?

[00:41:51] Yeah.

[00:41:51] Like Hokusai who would be doing shunga as well.

[00:41:54] You know, some may sign their names to it, some may not.

[00:41:58] Did Hokusai sign his octopus?

[00:42:01] I think he did.

[00:42:02] He did.

[00:42:03] Yeah.

[00:42:03] Because again, it wasn't seen as something bad.

[00:42:06] It was some people within the culture, again, authorities did try to ban shunga, but it was

[00:42:15] mainly like the Westerners who kind of looked at it and was like, oh my god, it's gross.

[00:42:19] You know?

[00:42:19] It means spring, which is a euphemism for sex.

[00:42:24] Love it.

[00:42:24] Hmm.

[00:42:24] Yeah.

[00:42:25] Yeah, it's cool, eh?

[00:42:26] And there's a kind of shunga print which were like less explicit, so to speak, and they're

[00:42:34] kind of suitable for viewing by younger people.

[00:42:37] And they're called abunae and they're basically translated as like risque pictures.

[00:42:44] So you would kind of, it's like you would have the people being fully clothed, you know,

[00:42:48] kind of like kissing, almost fondling, but not quite.

[00:42:51] Yeah.

[00:42:51] So you can look up images of that.

[00:42:54] Yeah.

[00:42:55] So shunga was very influenced by Chinese medical manuals.

[00:43:01] It's so interesting.

[00:43:02] I just love all these connections, you know?

[00:43:05] And apparently a Tang Dynasty painter called Zhou Feng was thought to have been really influential.

[00:43:14] He, like many artists of his time, drew the genitals in like a kind of oversized manner, which is, you know, similar to what you would see in this shunga artwork.

[00:43:25] So who owned them, right?

[00:43:55] You know, pervaded different aspects of life.

[00:43:58] And obviously, so when the Westerners came down, right, and they saw it, they were like, it's horrible.

[00:44:04] You know, it's vile.

[00:44:06] Apparently, there was this guy called Francis Hall, an American businessman who arrived in Yokohama in 1859.

[00:44:15] And then when he was showed it by his Japanese acquaintances and their wives in their homes, his art, he was just, you know, his sensibilities were offended.

[00:44:24] Oh, no.

[00:44:25] Horrible.

[00:44:25] Horrible.

[00:44:26] And then even in the Western museums, for the longest time, they weren't actually, like, museums had them, right?

[00:44:33] Because, you know, people be taking shit.

[00:44:36] But they wouldn't display them.

[00:44:38] So even the British Museum, so there was this guy called Peter Webb.

[00:44:42] And he was doing some research in the 70s.

[00:44:47] And he was informed the British Museum that, nope, we don't have anything like that.

[00:44:51] Eventually, they said, yeah, yeah, okay, we do.

[00:44:54] But it would not be shown to the public.

[00:44:57] But thankfully, when he went back in 2014, there was an exhibition showing it.

[00:45:03] Again, it's an art form, you know?

[00:45:06] So you're describing how, like, because of Western influence, this art form becomes more taboo, which kind of pushes it underground when the Japanese occupy Korea.

[00:45:18] So you've got this Western influence on Japan that is then passed over to Korea.

[00:45:23] So this guy in Korea who is trying to be Japanese turns it into this secret underground taboo art form that gets all mixed up with people doing weird sex stuff.

[00:45:36] Yeah.

[00:45:36] And that's how it becomes this source of abuse for our Hidako.

[00:45:42] Right?

[00:45:43] It's just another crazy layer in this movie.

[00:45:47] I was just like, wow.

[00:45:48] That's why I said it's a character in and of itself, you know?

[00:45:51] And that said, right, so you're talking about Westerners who kind of scorn these art forms.

[00:45:57] But you've got other famous artists like Rodin and Picasso who were very influenced by it.

[00:46:03] So, you know, the dream of the fisherman's wife, right?

[00:46:05] Apparently, Picasso drew his own version of it.

[00:46:09] I don't want to see that.

[00:46:11] Yeah.

[00:46:11] In 1903.

[00:46:12] And it was displayed in the Museum of Picasso alongside Hokusai's original as well.

[00:46:21] Picasso also later painted works that were also influenced by that.

[00:46:27] And later on in like early 2000s, there was an Australian painter called David Leyte who painted a work called The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife.

[00:46:36] But again, I've not actually been able to see what the work looks like.

[00:46:40] But apparently there was some controversy when it was shown in Melbourne and people were saying, oh, it's pornography.

[00:46:45] But technically, it did not break the city's anti-pornography laws.

[00:46:50] So that's what I just had to say about that, right?

[00:46:53] How very cool.

[00:46:56] Oh, that's brilliant.

[00:46:57] So since you're getting a bit literary, which I always support, I'm going to get a little anthropological.

[00:47:02] Woohoo!

[00:47:03] So I wanted to say a little bit about the gayness of it all in a country like Korea and how the film was received and how it connects a bit to anti-colonialism.

[00:47:15] So in interviews I read with Park Januk when the film came out, he said that there were two things he really wanted to do with this film, with the story that were really important to him.

[00:47:27] And the first was to create a gay story or a lesbian story, which was not necessarily about the struggles of being gay at the time and the place.

[00:47:42] It was about these characters.

[00:47:44] And part of that was in order to make lesbianism and lesbian sex seem normalized.

[00:47:52] And he said he wanted audiences to come out of the theater feeling like they had watched something that was normal and natural.

[00:47:59] And kind of to his surprise, considering some of the reception that his other films have gotten, this film in Korea, which is the way he described it is that it's quite divided.

[00:48:12] And that you'll have these big cities like Seoul, which do have gay pride parades, in which things are a bit more dynamic and progressive.

[00:48:22] And rights for LGBT individuals are getting better.

[00:48:28] Although the first gay couple didn't get married until 2013.

[00:48:32] And then in the countryside, things are much more conservative.

[00:48:37] No.

[00:48:39] But he said that the film did very well in Korea and that there weren't protests or people trying to ban the film or things like that, which was something that he was anticipating.

[00:48:52] And so he was really pleasantly surprised to find that people might've been shocked when they went into the film, but the reception was maybe a bit more to what he was hoping for.

[00:49:06] And now this is considered part of this emerging queer Korean cinema that is part of gay rights movement in Korea.

[00:49:16] And so I just connected to that.

[00:49:18] The second thing he said he wanted was to tell a story about the colonial period in Korea without the story being about the struggles of colonialism, if that makes sense.

[00:49:32] And what he means by that, I think, is the way he described it, that you have characters who are existing in this colonial period.

[00:49:41] And so, of course, everything about their lives is going to be affected by that colonialism.

[00:49:46] We've got Japanese characters, Korean characters.

[00:49:49] We've got Koreans who are trying to be Japanese.

[00:49:53] People are trying to go over to Japan.

[00:49:55] We've got a mixture of languages and all of these things.

[00:49:58] But that he wanted to focus the story on the people's lives and not on the struggle.

[00:50:06] And that's important because the anti-colonial story and film is part of a film movement in Korea as well.

[00:50:15] To criticize the Japanese occupation and to create these Japanese bad guys in film was part of a film movement that started pretty early on after the occupation ended.

[00:50:27] And he said in order to adapt this film, what he really needed and why he set it in the colonial period is that he needed a class difference.

[00:50:38] Mm-hmm.

[00:50:38] And the emergence of the emergence of the mad house, which was, again, a Western thing that had come to Japan.

[00:50:47] And then Japan had not so much brought it to Korea, but brought the idea to Korea.

[00:50:54] Mm-hmm.

[00:50:55] And so those are the elements that allowed him to recreate it.

[00:50:59] So if you're interested in social anthropological reading of these kinds of films, social anthropology is very interested in things like resistance to colonialism.

[00:51:10] And so you see throughout the film how characters are affected by colonialism, but how also they fight against it and invert it and try to use it to their advantage.

[00:51:23] Like even these con men, mad characters, are trying to invert and use these colonial trappings to make themselves more powerful.

[00:51:34] Mm-hmm.

[00:51:35] And so it affects the story in loads of different ways.

[00:51:39] But the director wanted to show all that, not shoo that away, but to make this really a story about these two women.

[00:51:47] Which he very much succeeded in doing.

[00:51:49] You know, just as you were saying that, I was just thinking back to our discussion that we had when we covered Brooklyn.

[00:51:55] And how we talked about what was great about that movie was the themes of the struggles of immigration was still there.

[00:52:02] But without actually showing what has become like so much of a trope, the struggling immigrant in movies.

[00:52:11] Fuck, we know everything was hard and everything in the past was shitty, but we don't need to see it in our films all the time.

[00:52:17] Yeah, it's good to be educated, but it's also to be educated in the other kinds of struggles, you know, or not, you know, yeah.

[00:52:25] And the struggles that were tangentially related to other aspects of one's identity.

[00:52:31] Yeah, exactly.

[00:52:32] I've seen some critiques of this film saying like, it's not very realistic.

[00:52:37] Like it was hard to be a woman and to be gay.

[00:52:40] And this film has shown it being too easy for them.

[00:52:44] Like, no, okay.

[00:52:46] Nobody is questioning whether or not it was difficult being lesbian in the 1930s in Korea and Japan.

[00:52:52] But that the story is about very, very different kinds of struggles and overcoming very different kinds of struggles that include things like colonialism.

[00:53:02] But the point is very different.

[00:53:04] I find it so, I guess, like a great parallel as well that the source text was set in Victorian England being at the height of its colonial powers.

[00:53:15] Yeah.

[00:53:15] Although the book was set in the heartland, in the center of colonialism in London and England.

[00:53:21] And now you have it being moved to a different time, a different location, but still dealing with colonialism in a way that the book obviously does not do at all.

[00:53:32] It's just kind of like if you can be bothered to think about what was happening at the time.

[00:53:37] You know?

[00:53:38] I also love how every single man in this movie ain't shit.

[00:53:44] Like, nobody cares about these male characters.

[00:53:51] They're all awful.

[00:53:51] There's one member of the orphanage crew who we see who is a man who barely has any lines.

[00:53:59] And, you know, he's a good guy because he's part of the crew.

[00:54:03] But, you know, we don't get – he's just a sidekick.

[00:54:05] We don't get to see him develop.

[00:54:07] All of the other men except Gerald, 201, are disgusting and vile.

[00:54:14] And if anything, just a roadblock to our heroines.

[00:54:20] Yes.

[00:54:21] Just one, you got to get the fuck out with their little Benoit balls.

[00:54:25] Yeah.

[00:54:26] Also, I learned from Kobe, the port where they left, to Shanghai, that's going to be a pretty significant boat trip.

[00:54:35] That now is like a six-hour flight.

[00:54:38] Oof.

[00:54:39] Yeah.

[00:54:39] So they're going to have a lot of time in their fancy cabin with their lesbian sex scene couch.

[00:54:45] And I love that for them.

[00:54:47] Good for them.

[00:54:49] Awesome.

[00:54:49] Well, that was really fun.

[00:54:54] Yes.

[00:54:55] And do you – on that note, do you have any awards besides, you know, best lesbian sex scene couch?

[00:55:00] Yeah.

[00:55:01] I figured that was a bit too specific.

[00:55:03] Although I do really want one or want to make one for myself.

[00:55:07] Mm-hmm.

[00:55:08] But – and then just, like, give it to some lesbians.

[00:55:11] Yeah.

[00:55:12] So my award has nothing to do with sex, actually.

[00:55:15] It goes to the employees of the orphanage.

[00:55:20] The employees?

[00:55:21] Yes.

[00:55:21] Yes.

[00:55:22] You get a pension and everything.

[00:55:23] The orphanage LLC.

[00:55:25] Yeah.

[00:55:26] For best criminal crew in a period drama.

[00:55:31] Aw.

[00:55:31] I know that they got – they got a cut.

[00:55:33] They got something out of it.

[00:55:35] But really, you need someone like Auntie Bok Soon, have your back, to come burn some shit down and slap you in a leather firefighter gear.

[00:55:46] Get you the fuck out of there.

[00:55:47] Also, I would like to think that they liberated other women who were wrongfully put in the, quote-unquote, madhouse.

[00:55:55] So, you know, collateral opposite of damage.

[00:55:58] Collateral liberation.

[00:55:59] Yeah.

[00:56:00] There we go.

[00:56:00] It would have been great to have just a little something about how she managed to, in the chaos, slip all of them some money or –

[00:56:09] It's like, here you go, man.

[00:56:10] Get out.

[00:56:10] Get the fuck out.

[00:56:11] You know, tickets.

[00:56:12] Tickets.

[00:56:13] Yeah.

[00:56:13] A lot of odd stock.

[00:56:15] Mm-hmm.

[00:56:15] Yeah, you know, maybe they all came and worked for her, you know.

[00:56:18] Maybe.

[00:56:19] They cut up everything.

[00:56:20] The crew took them home.

[00:56:22] Mm-hmm.

[00:56:22] Yeah.

[00:56:23] They're like, all right.

[00:56:23] We all be family now.

[00:56:25] Yeah, they've lost an employee.

[00:56:27] Yeah.

[00:56:28] So, there we go.

[00:56:29] Yeah.

[00:56:29] Well, my award is for best anti-smoking ad.

[00:56:34] What?

[00:56:35] Which is basically the scene.

[00:56:37] Respect the scene where, you know, it's like he's literally smoking.

[00:56:41] He's smoking himself to death, right?

[00:56:42] When the count is smoking his blue cigarettes.

[00:56:45] Mm-hmm.

[00:56:45] And he's like, mercury is most poisonous in its gaseous form.

[00:56:50] Which, is that true?

[00:56:51] I don't know.

[00:56:52] I'll take his word for it.

[00:56:54] Yeah.

[00:56:55] But you're right.

[00:56:56] That did make me want to not smoke.

[00:56:58] See?

[00:56:58] I already don't smoke, but.

[00:57:00] But there you go.

[00:57:02] So, that's my award.

[00:57:04] Brilliant.

[00:57:06] Well, I got to go start some designs for my lesbian sexing couch.

[00:57:10] Yes, please.

[00:57:11] And don't forget, you got to get on ordering all of us our Christmas presents.

[00:57:16] Yeah.

[00:57:16] Got to get me my Benoit balls, please.

[00:57:18] Thank you.

[00:57:19] What size do you want?

[00:57:20] No, don't answer that.

[00:57:23] Just give me an array.

[00:57:24] An array.

[00:57:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:57:25] Yeah.

[00:57:27] Also, if you would like to suggest any other period dramas that we should cover.

[00:57:32] Especially Korean language or.

[00:57:35] Yes, please.

[00:57:36] Japanese or Chinese.

[00:57:37] Any kind of East Asian period drama.

[00:57:40] We're very into it.

[00:57:41] You can write to us at fetchsmellingsalts at gmail.com.

[00:57:46] You can also hit us up on our Instagram, which is at fetchsmellingsalts.

[00:57:52] We're on threads as well.

[00:57:53] Yes.

[00:57:53] And if you fancy buying Helen a coffee, really, because, you know, she needs this.

[00:57:59] She needs so much coffee.

[00:58:01] She needs so much coffee, bless her.

[00:58:03] You can throw us some coins at buymeacoffee.com at fetchsmellingsalts.

[00:58:07] Right.

[00:58:08] So we have one more episode left in this season.

[00:58:11] We're going to do our Christmas episode and then we'll be taking another break.

[00:58:16] Yes, just a little wee break.

[00:58:18] Just a little Christmas holiday break.

[00:58:20] Okay, so we'll see you at Christmas time.

[00:58:23] Yes.

[00:58:24] Woohoo!

[00:58:25] Goodbye.

[00:58:26] Goodbye.

[00:58:27] It's all finished.

[00:58:37] What?