Sook-hee (Kim Tae-Ri) is a ladies maid. Except she's really a pickpocket hired by Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo). Who isn't really a count, but a forger of documents. He was hired by Lord Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong) to secretly copy Kouzuki's priceless collection of Japanese erotica being sold. Kouzuki is functionally broke but plans to marry his dead wife's niece, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee), an heiress in her own right. Fujiwara also wants that money, so he places Sook-hee in Hideko's employ as a maid to push his agenda as a suitor. But Sook-hee realizes that Hideko is functionally a prisoner in her own house, forced to read her uncle's collection to creepy, horny old men. Her sympathies soon come into conflict with the plan to marry Hideko to Fujiwara and then dump her in a nuthouse.
Even when you know there's a twist coming, it's so good that it still gets you. I love Park Chan-Wook as a director and this is a phenomenal slow-burn LGBT heist/thriller. Half the dialogue is in Japanese and half in Korean, delineated by different colored subtitles, which added a completely different dimension to the story. It's not just about women in servitude, it's about an entire country's struggle with self-determination in the face of a hostile invasion. The power dynamics are intricate and multi-layered and it is masterful. And super skeevy without actually showing anything! Like, all she's doing is reading a book and I was so grossed out by her audience's reactions that my skin was crawling.
It is (surprisingly) an Amazon Original, so it is streaming on Prime.
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