The Handmaiden  was based off the Gothic novel Fingersmith. It is set in 1930s South Korea and follows the story of a Japanese nobelwoman and her Korean handmaiden. The film explores power dynamics between social classes, genders, and ethnicities while portraying complex and often unsettling psychological states and manipulated/hidden identities is a major theme in the film. The two main women in the film are both victims and women with the agency to engage in deception, manipulation, and secrecy. The film portrays the struggle of women to have agency and control in their lives in a patriarchial society through the focus on a Korean woman from a poor and troubled background and a Japanese noblewoman in a foreign country whose life is completely determined by her uncle. The film also delves into themes of female sexuality and the male threat to the female body.