Ah dearest Kim Taeri! To think that I knew of you before THE HANDMAIDEN but not really knowing you! To think that I saw you kiss another woman before kissing Kim Min-hee and I did not write about you until now!
Shame on me!
That’s right, I saw this movie way before THE HANDMAIDEN when it was just a HD rip from television! But there were no subtitles back then and unlike Japanese, I know not a lick of Korean! Unless the movie was very straight forward and super gay to imply my gay power, there was no way I would brave it!
But now as it stands, good old Plain Archive did make a subtitled Bluray for us beggars and now that I can understand what is being said, albeit not a lot given that Moon Young (Kim Taeri) says literally two lines in the whole damn movie, well…
In addition, when I watched this movie back then, things did not make any sense to me, even visually, and even now after I have professional subtitles, I find that my understanding hasn’t actually improved that much! Seriously, other than the very specifics, I got the gist of things the first time around without subtitles!
What the subtitles do shine a light on though is that it was more Hee-soo who liked Moon Young than it was Moon Young crushing on a cool elder person, like 99% of all relationships go! Yep, this time around it was the older falling for the younger, though that does not mean that Moon Young did not have feelings for Hee-soo, there were many moments where her jealousy showed!
And really unlike Hee-soo who is very experienced, really experienced to the point of being called a…you know what, Moon Young probably had never been in a relationship! We never see her talking to anyone at school (though really it is an all girls school, not that that means anything) and she never talked to anyone outside, hell, she rarely talks to her father (read never in the span of this movie)!
So, her reaction after Hee-soo kissed her, can be taken as her not knowing what to do with it! It is most definitely not because she was not into that! Hee-soo is a clever woman too. She must have seen the way Moon Young acted and understood that she too was interested in Hee-soo. Not that everyone else misunderstanding her relationship with Moon Young did them any favours!
Another interesting fact about this movie is that Hee-soo and Moon Young’s age gap was almost the same as Hideko and Soo-kee! Here Hee-soo is 28 while Moon Young is only 18! That’s a whole ass decade! Though I actually have a feeling that Moon Young was really not 18! Girls usually say that as a first reaction to being asked their age! She was lying about her being a mute so why not something else too!
I guess though that some might, and it might be true to an extent, that Moon Young’s feeling towards Hee-soo could be confused with maternal love she so lacked and has been seeing since she was 4 when her mother left her! All this time she’s been looking for her mother that she does not even know how she looks like but posting videos to her grandmother in Japan might help, even though apparently there were no more replies from her!
But by the end Moon Young tells Hee-soo, the very first time that she talks, that she found her mother! If true, that would be such a good thing because at least it shows a reward at the end of the road and hopefully, Moon Young has also in turn helped Hee-soo change her flighty ways and decided to finally settle for a single person instead of stringing her not maybe boyfriend and her not maybe girlfriend!
With Moon Young she finally seemed to have changed and while it was not made so obvious, the signs are there! Also the fact that Moon Young finally decided to speak and it was to Hee-soo and the first words she said were her name, me can conclude that their relationship had only just begun!
Anyway, yeah, that’s that! So sorry it took me this long to write about you first ever project I saw Kim Taeri! I miss you!
Ja
~
百合 Goggles 
July 3, 2020 at 11:12
I just finished watching it and damn i need more. It makes me want to rewatch the handmaiden. Thank you for sharing, otherwise i won’t know this gold.