Dir: Park Chan-wook

With: Min-hee Kim, Tae-ri Kim, Jung-woo Ha

Runtime: 156 minutes, Japanese and Korean with subtitles

BANK holiday weekend and the cinemas are packed with animated extravaganzas and superheroes. But dig a little deeper, reach a bit further, and there are several goodies for the more intrepid cinemagoer to find in the great Easter weekend movie hunt. One of the most delicious is Park Chan-wook’s elegant and erotically charged thriller, The Handmaiden.

Adapted from the Sarah Waters novel Fingersmith, this tale of love and deception has more twists than Rapunzel’s plait. Not to worry if you are unfamiliar with the book. Indeed, this is one occasion when it is a positive advantage not to have read the novel (or seen the TV adaptation) before seeing the picture. Simply go with the flow and you will not go far wrong. Well you probably will, this is after all a story about secrets and lies, but taking wrong turns in this maze of a yarn is all part of the fun.

Chan-wook, the South Korean writer-helmer of Oldboy, transfers Waters’ story from dusty old Victorian England to Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s. At a stroke, the potential for menace, decadence and glamour heads through the roof and Chan-wook goes after every last inch of it.

Before we can get started on the glitz can there is the not inconsiderable matter of a grubby plot to be hatched. Sookee (Tae-ri Kim) is a poor Korean girl who knows little or nothing of the world. At least that is the story her “handler” (Jung-woo Ha) has woven. In reality, Sookee comes from a long line of flint-hearted pickpockets (the fingersmiths of the title) and purveyors of stolen goods.

Sookee is to become a maid to a young lady, Hideko (Min-hee Kim), who lives in the country with her domineering uncle. Hideko stands to inherit a fortune. Once Sookee is through the door, she will clear the way for her devilishly handsome handler, posing as a painting teacher by the name of Count Fujiwara, to enter the household, steal Hideko’s heart and then her money. Simple. Fiendish.

Hideko and Sookee, being of the same age and temperament, are soon getting on well. Rather too well for the purposes of one setting out to fleece the other. Suddenly, the fiendishly simple plan Sookee was meant to carry out does not seem so straightforward any more. Can she go through with the plot, and if not, how will her increasingly impatient handler (Jung-woo Ha) react?

This is a gorgeously-shot film where the eye is frequently spoiled for choice about what to settle on and drink in. The Japanese-themed rooms, all sliding doors and shadows, are perfect settings for a story in which many things are hidden or only half-glimpsed. Outdoors, whether in sun-dappled woods or in perfectly manicured gardens, Chan-wook continues his game of hide and seek with the viewer. Over the course of three parts, each told from a different perspective, he plays with our assumptions, always trying to keep the audience off balance and distracted, the better to keep us guessing where the story is going. Whether upstairs, downstairs, or in the lady’s chamber, this is a cast and director out to put on a slyly funny, highly amusing show.

It is just as well Chan-wook proves so adept at holding the attention, otherwise, at more than two and a half hours, The Handmaiden would be a long haul. As it is, the story only becomes richer and more satisfying as the director adds layer upon layer, filling in the background to the characters and the times. Like reading a Dickens novel (or indeed a Waters yarn) the pleasure lies in taking one’s time, losing oneself in a world a long way from our own. And as with a good doorstopper of a novel, it is almost a shame when the story begins to move towards its close, but end it must, if only to give you time to get to a bookshop and enjoy this ripping, gripping yarn all over again.

GFT and Belmont, Aberdeen, April 14-20; Filmhouse, Edinburgh, April 28-May 4.