Their blossoming affair is tenderly observed-a startlingly blunt sex scene is delayed until fairly deep into the film, and preceded by many scenes that pivot upon subtle glances, overheard remarks, and moments where one woman rushes to the other’s defense. The plan is fiendishly complicated, but it grows thornier still when Sooki/Tamako starts falling in love with her target. “What I desire is-how shall I put it?-the manner of ordering wine without looking at the price.” “Frankly, I’m not that interested in money itself,” says the fake count, who was raised by a Korean fisherman but claims to be Japanese and calls himself Fujiwara ( Ha Jung-woo).

The script tells of a spirited female pickpocket named Sooki, actually named Tamako ( Kim Tae-ri), who gets a job as a handmaiden at the estate of a rich old book collector (Lee Yong-nyeo), serving him and Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee), the niece of his late wife she gets pulled into a scheme by a fake count who wants to marry the niece and have her committed to an asylum so that he can claim her fortune the book collector, the fake count’s mentor, has more or less the same plan in mind. Every frame pulses with life, sometimes with blood. The result seems at once specifically English, specifically Korean and not of this astral plane like Park’s best work, it’s an expressionistic, at times surreal movie that skates along the knife-edge of dreams. The plot faintly evokes many Gothic thrillers (chiefly 'Rebecca,' 'Jane Eyre' and 'Gaslight') and quite a few examples of film noir as well Park’s source is Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, a 2002 novel set in Dickensian England that was previously made as a 2005 British miniseries. It’s also as inspiring an example of East-West cross-pollination as cinema has given us, on par with Akira Kurosawa’s adaptations of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Dashiell Hammett in its ability to submerge a respected source while keeping its outlines visible.

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