Videographic PechaKucha
The video is from the South Korean film “The Handmaiden” (아가씨, 2016), and the background audio features South Korean artist Kim Min-hee, saying “Your face, when night arrives, is often remembered.” and a half-spoken, half-sung old Korean song from the end of the century, 세기말의 노래.
세기말(世紀末)의 노래lyrics：
거미줄로 한허리를 얽고 거문고를 어루니 일만 설움 푸른 궁창아래 궂은 비만 내려라 시들퍼라 거문고야 내 사랑 거문고 까다로운 이 거리가 언제나 밝아지려 하는가 가랑잎에 동남풍을 실어 술렁술렁 떠나면 달 떨어진 만경창파 위에 까마귀만 우짖어 괴로워라 이 바다야 내 사랑 바다야 뒤숭숭한 이 바다가 언제나 밝아지려 하는가 청산벽계 저문 날을 찾아 목탁을 울리면서 돌아가신 어버이들 앞에 무릎을 꿇고 비노니 답답해라 이 마을아 내 사랑 마을아 어두워진 이 마을이 언제나 밝아지려 하는가
In the East Asian social context, love is often monopolized by romantic love. Yet in older societies, the mutual recognition and emotional resonance between women was not a substitute for romance, but a more enduring structure of survival than romance itself.
The Handmaiden is set in 1930s Korea under Japanese colonial rule. The story centers on Lady Hideko, the sole heiress to a vast fortune, who becomes the target of a greedy conman. In order to seize her wealth, he places a maid by her side, setting in motion a plot where conspiracy and desire intertwine. Although the film contains erotic elements, I argue that the emotional bond between the two female protagonists is fluid rather than fixed—moving between friendship, romantic love, and kinship. No one can guarantee emotional singularity over the course of a lifetime. In East Asian cultures, relationships between women are often portrayed through jealousy and rivalry, yet in reality women’s emotional worlds are frequently more sensitive and complex, allowing for a wider range of relational possibilities. Ultimately, what emerges is love. What I aim to articulate here is a form of female love that remains largely unseen.
The first scene I selected is Hideko’s wedding. As she recites the Buddhist Five Precepts as part of the marriage vow, she stops short at “no sexual misconduct,” speaking only “no misconduct,” and turns to look at her maid. When she reaches “no false speech,” she falls completely silent.
This corresponds to the voiceover line, “Your face, when night arrives, is often remembered.” The sentence is intensely restrained, like an emotional afterimage that is only permitted to surface when night falls. It carries a distinctly East Asian feminine subtlety. “When night arrives” suggests a form of feeling that cannot be spoken or acknowledged in daylight, while “often remembered” implies something that repeatedly returns—an emotional bond that cannot be severed, yet cannot be claimed. When the world grows quiet, I finally allow myself to think of you. This is the core condition of female intimacy: not a publicly declared, confrontational, or named “romantic love,” but a gentle, restrained, low-voiced emotional connection forced into this form by structures of oppression.
Kim Min-hee’s performance does not rely on emotional display, dramatic tension, or technical virtuosity, but rather on an almost “anti-performative” presence. Her power lies in a silence that feels like it has already seen everything. This subdued, almost narrational delivery allows emotion itself to exist through her. The key of the line is not “you,” but “remembered.” It expresses an affective stance that demands no response, no possession, and no future. Under structural oppression, women acknowledge one another’s existence without rushing to elevate that feeling into a “defined relationship.” They choose a hidden yet steadfast mode of emotional co-existence.
This connects to the second scene: the moment when Hideko first develops feelings for the maid. The maid innocently wears the elegant clothes Hideko usually dons, unaware that these outfits are actually worn when Hideko is forced to read pornography aloud to male guests—a deeply humiliating and traumatic experience. What is unbearable suffering for Hideko appears as mere clothing to the maid. Hideko finds her both endearing and pitiable, envies her simplicity and lack of experience, and fears for her innocence within the deadly scheme being enacted. That night, Hideko’s feelings deepen into a mixture of pity, tenderness, sorrow, and a cautious, guilt-tinged love.
The maid’s emotional position is revealed in the third scene, where she practices arranging other women’s hair before going to Hideko’s house so she can properly care for her. They speak of the maid’s mother, which reinforces her belief that she has been loved. This inherited chain of maternal affection is then passed on to Hideko. Accordingly, the maid’s first feeling for Hideko is maternal love. The image of a “rope made of spider silk drawn into a bowstring” visually resembles hanging, foreshadowing the fate of the women in Hideko’s household, all of whom die by suicide. In the first half of the story, the maid is indeed complicit in pushing Hideko toward that fate. East Asian narratives rarely depict such complexity in women’s mutual love. When love is asymmetrical yet equally deep, imbalance between giving and receiving can become destructive. Silent love, often idealized, becomes the trigger of tragedy.
Later, as Hideko and the maid flee toward the Count, the film cuts to a memory of Hideko’s aunt hanging herself while the young Hideko watches below—the previous woman destroyed by this household. The accompanying lyric, “hundreds upon thousands of sorrows,” reflects Hideko’s belief that her own fate will inevitably mirror her aunt’s: moving from one cage to another. “Under the vast sky, only the crows cry.” For Hideko, only the maid matters. Without her, the world is the same; without her, life has no weight. With her, even death is acceptable. She eats each grain of rice, climbs each step, not because she is unhappy, but because she no longer cares. This emotional numbness terrifies the maid. To feel pity for someone is one of the furthest reaches of love.
This leads to the scene in which the maid packs Hideko’s clothes before the wedding. Hideko gazes at the camera through a spiderweb while the maid appears nestled against her. This suggests Hideko’s control over the entire scheme: everyone is caught in her web, including the maid. Yet is she truly that fearless? As the background calls out “my love,” the film cuts to young Hideko shielding herself from her aunt’s suicide with a doll. The same doll lies on Hideko’s bed when the maid returns, signaling something is wrong. As Hideko breaks down and prepares to hang herself, the maid catches her. With the lyric “When will we see the light on this rugged road?” the two women finally find that light in each other.
If Kim Min-hee’s voice represents the inner world, night, and private emotional consciousness, then the song End of the Century functions as a farewell to the old world and a faint, unnamed hope for the future. “The end of the century” is not merely a temporal marker but a psychological state—a weariness with order, a clarity about cyclical oppression, a quiet recognition that this world can no longer contain us. If the old world cannot be changed, then let me at least reach its end with you.
Women in the old world could not easily overturn its structures. But before those structures collapse, the mutual recognition of “I am not alone” becomes a form of survival. This is an inward emotional structure: under systemic oppression, intimacy itself becomes a bloodless form of resistance. In a world that refuses to acknowledge them, women seeing and remembering each other is an ethical mode of existence.
By dismantling linear causality and prolonging emotional duration, I allow relationships to exist in a state of “not-yet-determined becoming.” The chosen images are pauses, glances back, moments without immediate reaction. Kim Tae-ri’s voice retains breath, resonance, and emotions that have not yet landed. The corresponding images are unresolved gazes. Here, female intimacy is presented not as a pursuit of victory or definition, but as a long-lasting, profound ethical choice.
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