The Little Drummer Girl (2018)

I usually find John le Carre's spy thrillers to be slow and boring. But honestly I thought The Little Drummer Girl was a brilliant slow burn. It was intense and legitimately thrilling. It's a tight six episodes. The Mossad don't mess around. They recruit an English actress to go undercover and infiltrate a Palestinian group plotting terrorist attacks in Europe. What's especially interesting about that is that she's an actress playing a part. Of course, that's all undercover work, but it's not usually framed as acting. Usually, the spy has certain sympathies but we're never quite sure where her sympathies lie. She waivers because she's an actress first. In the Mossad agents too, Gadi acknowledges that they may not be the good guys. That's a devastating admission for a spy. 

Park Chan-wook's production is ravishing. The colors, the composition and the camera movement are distinctive Park.  After watching Decision to Leave, I wanted more Park and I'm glad to have finally checked this one off the list. I hadn't realized what a great starry cast he had but was pleasantly surprised. The undercover actress is played by a never better Florence Pugh. She is good in everything. Her handler is played by Alexander Skarsgard. He too plays a part, her target. It allows her to rehearse and learn her character. It reminds me of In the Mood for Love because as they role play, they too begin to fall in love. They blur the line between acting and reality. Michael Shannon plays the leader of the Mossad team and he is fantastic.

Oldboy (2003)

I finally got around to seeing Oldboy. Having already seen The Handmaiden, I think the Handmaiden is actually a stronger film. That being said, Oldboy is quintessential to understanding the evolution of Korean cinema. It's stylish, it's bloody violent, it's twisted and sick--it pushes cinematic boundaries. It's a brutally intense revenge thriller that is so ridiculous that it is comedic. And it's non-stop. The ending is so shocking and cringy it leaves you reeling. The whole movie you just can't look away because it's hypnotic. My favorite scene is a single shot fight scene; it looks like something out of Street Fighter in a 2D hallway. 

The Handmaiden (Agassi) (2016)

Park Chan-wook is kind of like Quentin Tarantino. I noticed some elements in this film that I saw in the Hateful Eight, but The Handmaiden was so much better. Park's violence is not as gratuitous as Tarantino's, but there were certainly some over the top scenes. He does have a lot of nudity in this film, but it is mostly necessary to the plot, save for the final scene which is purely gratuitous as the movie had already finished. The weird thing is I usually don't like Tarantino, but I loved this movie. It was a more tasteful and less comic than Taratino's recent work in the way that his recent films don't compare to Pulp Fiction.

Park cleverly transposed the source material from Victorian England to colonial Korea, making the story his own. The style is apparent from the very beginning. There are some gorgeous shots. I particularly loved the design of the mansion that is half-Western, half-Japanese, and fully Korean undergoing westernization and Japanese imperialism.  It has that creepy feeling that Victorian homes have, while it also retains the openness of a Japanese courtyard. The costumes also take inspiration from two worlds. The design and cinematography is just so beautiful, as are all the actors.

The film unravels in parts, with new twists being revealed by rewatching the story from different points of view. It is a clever way to tell a story and it keeps the viewer guessing what the next twist will be. The Hateful Eight was also like that, but with just three main characters this was a little more manageable.

I did notice an interesting translation. The French title Mademoiselle retains the original meaning of the Korean title Agassi, in reference to the lady. However, the English title refers to the lady's maid. The English title leads us to believe that the maid is the protagonist, and she is for part one. But the story evolves and Agassi takes center stage too. Why the change? I'm not so sure. I am very glad I got to see this one in the palace. It was my first film in the main competition and it didn’t disappoint.