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so that happened.
Nov. 6th, 2016 11:37 pmYesterday, I watched The Handmaiden as a birthday-prelude outing with a couple of girls from my cohort. It was a super busy week (or 10 days, whatever), so all I'd based this decision on was this one-sentence synopsis from IMDB. Lady spy! I mean, really, there are a million awesome movies to be made about lady spies! Surely one can't go wrong!
So we go to the theater and get through Part 1, and huh, lady spy movie with lesbian romance? If ever there was a fanfic setup, but way to put that on the big screen. (At this point I note that I haven't read Fingersmith, which my friends later told me this was based on. Given that they came with me to watch this anyway, I likely wouldn't have changed my decision.) ( semi-detailed spoilers-ish start here )
Overall reaction: what did I just watch. (Answer: a bad fanfic.) My friends inform me that most of the reviews for this movie were great; I highly disagree. My sister calls it over the top; I'd call it an interesting mess that buried all the interesting bits in piles of wtf. Given wider media trends of hypersexualized Asian women, not to mention Asian women in porn, a lot of this movie made me uncomfortable. It's SO male gaze-y, often with LITERAL ON-SCREEN MALE GAZE. (Weirdly, the lesbian sex scenes are probably the least male gaze-y moments I could name in this movie.) Also, this movie perpetuates the narrative that Asian women need saving from Asian men, though at least ( vague spoiler? ). The various portrayals of mental illness, suicide, various types of abuse, and general sexual skeeviness probably need trigger warnings; I sure as hell wish someone had warned me about those. In conclusion, I'm not sure I exactly regret watching it, but it definitely left me in a haze of perplexity and dismay.
So we go to the theater and get through Part 1, and huh, lady spy movie with lesbian romance? If ever there was a fanfic setup, but way to put that on the big screen. (At this point I note that I haven't read Fingersmith, which my friends later told me this was based on. Given that they came with me to watch this anyway, I likely wouldn't have changed my decision.) ( semi-detailed spoilers-ish start here )
Overall reaction: what did I just watch. (Answer: a bad fanfic.) My friends inform me that most of the reviews for this movie were great; I highly disagree. My sister calls it over the top; I'd call it an interesting mess that buried all the interesting bits in piles of wtf. Given wider media trends of hypersexualized Asian women, not to mention Asian women in porn, a lot of this movie made me uncomfortable. It's SO male gaze-y, often with LITERAL ON-SCREEN MALE GAZE. (Weirdly, the lesbian sex scenes are probably the least male gaze-y moments I could name in this movie.) Also, this movie perpetuates the narrative that Asian women need saving from Asian men, though at least ( vague spoiler? ). The various portrayals of mental illness, suicide, various types of abuse, and general sexual skeeviness probably need trigger warnings; I sure as hell wish someone had warned me about those. In conclusion, I'm not sure I exactly regret watching it, but it definitely left me in a haze of perplexity and dismay.
