I went in knowing only that Park Chan-wook had made a period thriller and that Cannes had loved it. I came out feeling like I had watched three films stacked inside one, each quietly rewriting the one before it. A pickpocket named Sook-hee is planted in a grand house as a maid, part of a con to separate a sheltered heiress from her fortune. Kim Tae-ri plays her with such quick, watchful eyes that you never doubt she is counting the exits. Kim Min-hee, as Lady Hideko, gives away almost nothing, and that stillness turns out to be the film's biggest trick. Ha Jung-woo's Count Fujiwara is oily and charming in exactly the proportions the plot needs. Every room in that house is composed like a painting, and the film trusts you to notice how the same corridor feels different once you know what happened in it. The twists are not cheap reversals. They are the same events seen again from a new angle, and the second look at a scene often hurts more than the first. Two honest reservations. At close to two and a half hours it sags a little through the middle, and the explicit scenes run longer than the story strictly needs. For me the whole thing still held, because underneath all the schemes this is a story about two women deciding to trust each other, and that part is played with real tenderness. If you only know Park Chan-wook from his revenge films, this is a different animal. Slower, prettier, and far more sly.