The Film Stage: I read an interview with you that was conducted by someone who found The Handmaiden’s “male gaze” troubling. Have many people spoken to you about those matters after seeing the film?
Park Chan Wook: You know how important these reading sessions, that Hideko is part of, are for this film? These scenes are designed to literally show what “male gaze” is, and, in a very palpable manner, it shows you what the violence of gaze can do. Even if Hideko was wearing layers of kimono, it doesn’t matter; she might as well have been exposed in the nude in front of those men. So, rather than touch her, these men are meters away from the stage where she’s giving the reading — but, in these reading sessions, they might as well have been gang-raping her. So for a filmmaker who is trying to make a film about the violence of male gaze, and to make a movie that is a criticism of these kinds of violent male gaze, really, how careful we have been and how much thought we have put into designing these scenes of Hideko, who’s been the subject of such violent male gaze all her life. When she finds her true love and has this moment of love, and makes love, how careful would I have been not to make that moment yet another object of voyeuristic male gaze?
So, if you could, please consider that. I would ask, please, that you forget the fact that I am a male director and, please, try to look at the film objectively. To depict a woman as having sexual desires, in a frank manner — to be showing a nude female body, and show it in a beautiful way — does that automatically make this fall into the male gaze category? I think that’s where the problem begins, and this kind of thought, in itself, is a “male gaze” of looking at this issue. It is entirely possible for female filmmakers to depict women in their honest sexual desire and to show their nude body and the beauty of it. Female directors could just as well do that.
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