20 Amazing South Korean Movies You Must See Before You Die

Having seen Oldboy become an unremarkable Hollywood thriller even in the hands of Spike Lee, Park Chan-wook is well aware of the pitfalls of a localised remake. Nevertheless his version of Sarah Waters's Victorian British lesbian melodrama Fingersmith, recontextualised for Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s, may just be his masterpiece.

Park's film sticks to the outline of Waters's novel in which a female pickpocket becomes a lady's maid as part of a plan to encourage her to marry a dastardly conman, but ends up falling for the lady herself.

So many of the twists, secrets and reveals that made the book such a pageturner remain, keeping the film gripping even at over two and a half hours long. But the movie also adds a layer wherein the themes of class and identity also encompass the tangled relationship between Korea and Japan.

Actress Kim Tae-ri beat 1500 rivals to make her film debut as pickpocket Sook-hee and delivered an engaging and provocative performance as her character has everything she that thinks she knows repeatedly turned completely upside down.

Sumptuous, suspenseful and sensual, The Handmaiden is the mix of Wilkie Collins sensation novel, Kim Ki-young film melodrama and sapphic erotica that you never knew you needed.