Actor Kim Tae-ri expressed delight at the homage scene to The Handmaiden in the film No Other Choice.
On the 9th, Masters Talk, released on Cine21's YouTube channel, featured director Park Chan-wook and Kim Tae-ri. Director Park Chan-wook is currently meeting audiences with his new film No Other Choice. Accordingly, Kim Tae-ri, who formed a bond with him on The Handmaiden in the past, talked with director Park Chan-wook about the work.
No Other Choice tells the story of office worker Mansu (Lee Byung-hun), whose life had felt "complete," being suddenly fired and preparing his own war toward reemployment to protect his wife and two children and to hold on to the house he struggled to acquire. Alongside Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin appears as Mansu's wife Miri, Park Hee-soon as Mansu's rival Seon-chul, Lee Sung-min as Mansu's other rival Beom-mo, and Yeom Hye-ran as Beom-mo's wife Ara.
Kim Tae-ri laughed, "What made me say 'oh my' while watching No Other Choice was when the scene I visited on set appeared, I said 'oh my.'" She added with delight, "Also, in the picnic scene Beom-mo and Ara spread a mat and Mansu watches from beside a rock. That's the scene from The Handmaiden where Hideko (Kim Min-hee) goes on a picnic and Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) spies on her."
So what other hidden homage scenes did director Park Chan-wook include in No Other Choice? Park Chan-wook said, "First, Mansu's toothache is from director Yu Hyun-mok's Obaltan. Of course it also appears in the novel by Lee Beom-seon, but in the film the character played by Kim Jin-kyu continuously suffers from a toothache, and that runs throughout."
Meanwhile, Kim Tae-ri also asked about similarities between the characters. After Lee Sung-min said in a previous interview that "Beom-mo is not a complex character like Mansu," Kim Tae-ri said, "To me, Beom-mo was as complex as Mansu himself."
On this, director Park Chan-wook added about the similarity in actions between the characters, "Some of it was already written in the script, some was done through storyboards, and I told the actors the commonalities between the two by saying 'this line was written for that reason.' But I didn't tell them to prepare something more new."
[Photo] OSEN DB, YouTube source.
[OSEN]