612: Lez-ssentials The Handmaiden

If we could be yours for ten minutes, what would you give in exchange? This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) talk about the 2016 Korean lesbian film The Handmaiden for this Lez-ssentials episode, a recurring segment on the essential movies and TV shows in the lesbian canon. If you have not yet seen this movie, do not listen to this episode until you have! It is highly spoiler heavy and the movie is honestly best when you go into it with no expectations. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. 

The Handmaiden is an emotional rollercoaster, but you can breathe easier knowing that there is a happy ending for our lesbians. The story follows Sook-Hee, a young woman who is hired to be a handmaiden for Japanese heiress, Lady Hideko. We soon learn that she was actually hired by The Count to help him defraud Lady Hideko and steal all her riches. The Count had planned to elope with Lady Hideko, take her money, and then leave her in an asylum. Things get tricky when unbeknownst to The Count, Sook-Hee begins sleeping with Lady Hideko so that the Lady can practice for married life (as one does) and inadvertently catches feelings for her.

Lady Hideko may be marrying The Count, but there is no question about her sexuality. She sleeps with Sook-Hee under the guise of practicing for The Count, but then completely refuses to sleep with him even to consummate their marriage. So what was all that “practice” actually for? Lady Hideko, we know what you are. 

This is where things start to get really problematic for our lesbians. Even though she won’t sleep with him, Lady Hideko sees The Count as a way out from living with her extremely creepy, sexually abusive uncle. The two elope, cash out Hideko’s inheritance, and trick the people at the asylum into thinking Sook-Hee is Lady Hideko so that Sook-Hee can be committed in her place and Hideko’s uncle will be none the wiser.

At first watch, we were worried that this was going in the direction most lesbian films go, with one woman betraying the other and going off with a man in the end, and the other woman suffering or even dying. Luckily for everyone, this is not the case. Sook-Hee manages to flee the asylum and reunites with Lady Hideko who escapes The Count and steals back her fortune by slipping opium into his wine. They get on the ferry to Shanghai and flee together, and the gross perverted uncle and the swindling “Count” are both killed from mercury poisoning. 

The Handmaiden features a wildly explicit, surprisingly long lesbian sex scene, a happy ending for Lady Hideko and Sook-Hee, and a well-deserved tragic death for the incredibly problematic men! What more could we ask for? 

At the end of the episode, stick around to hear our original song based on The Handmaiden titled “Fool For Me” written by Leigh Holmes Foster, produced by Ellie Brigida, and performed by Ellie Brigida and Leigh Holmes Foster. Join us on Patreon at bit.ly/lezpatreon for mp3 downloads of all our original songs or find us on Bandcamp to purchase songs individually. 

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