Nobenäpp (The Handmaiden) (Ah-ga-ssi)

Park’s twisty, kinky, divinely decadent period thriller, set in a Japanese-occupied 1930s Korea that’s imagined with baroque flourish by set designer Ryu Seong-hee, follows hired handmaiden Kim Tae-ri as she enters the service of shut-in heiress Kim Min-hee and her elderly, dictatorial uncle, while at the same time pursuing an underhanded agenda unknown to her new master and mistress—until, that is, the women concoct a plan of their own to take care of the men who have been manipulating and controlling them. An ingeniously structured work whose interlocking narratives and tricky perspectival shifts, handled with apparent ease, make for an acerbic, comic, and often sultry spin on the old-dark-house mystery, taut with thrilling turnabouts and and SM restraints.