Park Chan-Wook’s Next Movie Is Lesbian Drama ‘Fingersmith’
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After a foray into English-language filmmaking withStoker, South Korean directorPark Chan-wookis taking inspiration from an English-language source for his next Korean-language film. He’s currently at work onFingersmith, based on a 2002 lesbian crime novel bySarah Waters. Get all the details on the Park Chan-wook Fingersmith movie after the jump.
Varietyreports production onFingersmithbegan last week near Nagoya, Japan, and will continue for at least another 70 days. The project is budgeted at around $10 million USD, and is expected to hit theaters sometime in 2016. Hopefully we’ll get it in the U.S. not too long after that.
Adapted byChung Seo-kyung(Thirst), Park’sFingersmithmoves the action from Victorian-era London to Japan and Japan-occupied Korea in the 1930s. Waters' novel follows a petty thief who becomes involved in a con to take an heiress' money, but then begins to fall for the mark. The story was previously adapted into a BBC drama starring Sally Hawkins in 2005. (That’s where the image at the top is from.)
Kim Min-hee(No Tears for the Dead) andKim Tae-ritake the female leads inFingersmith, andHa Jung-woo(The Chaser) is the male lead. Park’sOldboycinematographerJeong Jeong-hunreturns, as doesThirstproduction designerRyu Seong-hee.
Park is best known for his “Vengeance trilogy,” the most acclaimed of which isOldboy. His other notable credits includeThirstandJ.S.A.: Joint Security Area. 2013’sStokeris his first and so far only English-language film, but weheard last yearthat he was prepping a second, the sci-fi thrillerSecond Born.
Here’s a more detailed synopsis of Waters' book viaAmazon.
Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a “baby farmer,” who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.
One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.
With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways…But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.
