Grading The Handmaiden, scene by scene
Scene – Palace’s back garden
This is where the Count is angry with Sook-hee.
I reduced the brightness of the tree-lined garden to concentrate on the two characters.
Scene – Hideko and Sook-hee run away
Here Hideko and Sook-hee run away from the palace for freedom. These cuts, arranged in Part 1 and Part 2, have a temporal change from the moment they run away over the wall to the moment they run across a wide field.
Hideko and Sook-hee keep running toward freedom from the dark night to the coming of the dawn.
The grade involved adding the feeling of the sunshine by separating the key of the characters and the field.