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The Handmaiden: A sexy revenge thriller from Korea

Chat from Cannes

The BBC Culture team discuss two films in competition at the Cannes Film Festival that deal with forbidden love – Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden and Jeff Nichols’ Loving.

Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden is a glossy revenge thriller that adapts Sarah Walters’ novel Fingersmith, moving the action to Korea in the 1930s. It features some shocking violence, graphic lesbian sex – and a giant octopus.

In total contrast is Jeff Nichols’ new film Loving: a quiet, understated film about a real-life couple in the 1950s who fought to have the law against interracial marriage in the US overturned. It has been praised for its subtlety and restraint – but does it hold back too much?

Tom Brook discusses these films with BBC Culture film critic Nicholas Barber and writer and broadcaster, Agnès Poirier.

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