We all know Korea can produce some great films...this is a little different. They knew what they had here and ran with it. Dont think the film is trying to pawn itself off as artsy. Sex sells and sells well...especially with some girl on girl.

The film is based on a critically well received crime novel by British author Sarah Waters called Fingersmith, which was also adapted into a BBC mini series under the same title:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/02/fiction.sarahwaters
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/13812-fingersmith

This Korean film version more or less follows the plot from the novel / mini series, but transforms the story from Victorian Britain into colonial Korea during the 1930s. Since the plot of the novel is about male pornography and lesbian love - how is it surprising to anyone that the movie does deal with the same explicit topics? Or, in the words of Sarah Waters:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/apr/08/sarah-waters-the-handmaiden-turns-pornography-into-a-spectacle-but-its-true-to-my-novel-

"When I [Claire Armitstead, the interviewer from the article] say that I found the lingering intimacy uncomfortable to watch, because it sails so close to traditional girl-on-girl porn, Waters counters that younger women and young queer people appear to be welcoming it. "Fingersmith was about finding space for women to be with each other away from prying eyes," she says. "Though ironically the film is a story told by a man, it's still very faithful to the idea that the women are appropriating a very male pornographic tradition to find their own way of exploring their desires.""

Porn is written to make money - nothing else.

@strangebedfellows wrote:

Porn is written to make money - nothing else.

Oh, certainly, yes. In a capitalist world that's ruled by men, showing women getting intimate with each other is often indeed a mere selling point to please male viewers and their pre-conceptions of how this works (you don't have to look any further for proof of that than by reading @mechajutaro's dull comments here in this thread).

However, if a book or a film or any other art form questions this (mostly) male point of view from a female perspective, it might also offer something else and completely different: a re-definition of lesbian love and eroticism as an expression of women's desires that's directed to (mostly) female viewers. You can also make money with these kinds of books/films - but that's not their main purpose. As the character Maud says at the end of the miniseries -> she might have to go on to write those filthy pornographic stories to "earn a living in this world," but she rather write something else or do something better with her life - in an effort to change the (filthy) world she's living in.

And that's exactly what books/films like this one also try to achieve.

she might have to go on to write those filthy pornographic stories to "earn a living in this world," but she rather write something else or do something better with her life - in an effort to change the (filthy) world she's living in.

How does adding to the filth end it? There are other best sellers which are not pornographic at all - a weak excuse.

Oh, certainly, yes. In a capitalist world that's ruled by men, showing women getting intimate with each other is often indeed a mere selling point to please male viewers and their pre-conceptions of how this works.

So why do it? Why pander to men?

It seems to me that this trend (not recent of course - Anais Anais was no slouch) is an attempt for women to be equal to men - my question in this instance is why? Women often denigrate men for their obsession with porn - why on earth would they want to be purveyors of it? Doesn't that seem like hypocrisy? Do people need written and filmed porn to explore their sexuality? Given the promiscuity of this world it doesn't seem like it.