Best LGBTQ Films of 2010-2019
Handmaiden
A stylistic tour de force, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden is not a conventional adaptation of Sarah Waters’s lesbian-themed novel Fingersmith (see the BBC adaptation version).
But Waters novel about a love story between women in 1862 inspired the director of cult films Oldboy and Snowpiercer to move the setting from England to Japanese-occupied Korea.
The plot to defraud an heiress of her inheritance unfolds as a psychological thriller with radically unexpected twists and turns.
The love affair between Lady/Izumi Hideko (Kim Min-hee) and Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) ends with ultimate devotion in which the women outsmart the men who seek to dominate them.