Stoker at 10: Park Chan-wook’s Hitchcockian… | Little White Lies

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Stok­er at 10: Park Chan-wook’s Hitch­cock­ian fairytale

23 Feb 2023

Words by Kevin Bui

Two individuals, a woman and a man, standing near a grand piano in a room.
Two individuals, a woman and a man, standing near a grand piano in a room.
This dark com­ing-of-age thriller is Park’s own scin­til­lat­ing twist on The Mas­ter of Sus­pense’s Shad­ow of a Doubt.

In a Park Chan-wook film, any­thing can be turned into a fetish: the snap of a leather belt; the strings from a grand piano; the heels on a pair of stilet­tos. All these objects and more are sub­ject­ed to the gaze of his cam­era in Stok­er, the Kore­an director’s Eng­lish-lan­guage debut, and a deli­cious­ly twist­ed com­ing-of-age film that toys with ideas of per­for­mance, gen­der and sex­u­al per­ver­si­ty with­in the frame­work of a taut psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller.

Through­out his career, Park’s work has drawn numer­ous com­par­isons to the movies of Alft­ed Hitch­cock, a film­mak­er who like­wise told tales of intrigue and sus­pense cen­tred around sim­i­lar­ly erot­ic ele­ments. Many have not­ed the Hitch­cock­ian influ­ences that can be found in last year’s Deci­sion to Leave, Park’s crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed roman­tic mur­der-mys­tery, in its por­tray­al of a man’s unat­tain­able quest to under­stand a woman whose own image seems to be in a con­stant state of flux. But it’s Stok­er that is Park’s most con­scious­ly ref­er­en­tial film, a loose remake of Hitchcock’s own Hol­ly­wood debut Shad­ow of a Doubt. Although both movies chart a teenage girl’s increas­ing­ly per­plex­ing infat­u­a­tion with her mys­te­ri­ous uncle, Stok­er trans­forms the sala­cious sub­text of the orig­i­nal film into full-blown psy­cho­sex­u­al melo­dra­ma, fil­ter­ing con­ven­tion­al com­ing-of-age nar­ra­tive beats through the lens of one of con­tem­po­rary cinema’s most tan­ta­lis­ing directors.

We first meet India Stok­er (Mia Wasikows­ka) on the morn­ing of her eigh­teenth birth­day, which also hap­pens to be the day her father Richard (Der­mot Mul­roney) dies in a trag­ic car acci­dent. At his funer­al a few weeks lat­er, she catch­es her first glimpse of Char­lie (Matthew Goode), her sole pater­nal uncle whose exis­tence she has nev­er been made aware of until this day.

A shot from India’s point-of-view reveals him to be perched upon a hill over­look­ing the som­bre pro­ceed­ings. India’s rela­tion­ship with her moth­er Eve­lyn (Nicole Kid­man, a mod­ern Hitch­cock siren if there ever were one) is strained at best, and when Char­lie decides to stay with the women for a few days fol­low­ing the funer­al, a puz­zling game of sex­u­al one-upman­ship ensues, as moth­er and daugh­ter attempt to win the affec­tions of the new man of the house.

Two people, a man in a white shirt and a woman in a light sweater, standing outside a traditional building with a red door.

For Eve­lyn, Charlie’s sud­den appear­ance rep­re­sents an oppor­tu­ni­ty for an excit­ing new romance, one that reminds her of ear­li­er days with Richard, before we weren’t so dis­tant” she says. But for India, his pres­ence sets off a wave of uncer­tain­ty with­in her mind, as peo­ple around the Stok­er house­hold soon start drop­ping dead thanks to the work of a shad­owy killer. It’s a nar­ra­tive beat that Park bor­rows from Shad­ow of a Doubt. In that film, Hitch­cock posi­tions the deaths that Uncle Charlie’s arrival brings to the domes­tic set­ting as an alle­go­ry for the inno­cence of Rock­wellian sub­ur­bia being punc­tured by the evils of the real’ world.

Though the sex­u­al pathol­o­gy between uncle and niece is more than pal­pa­ble through­out the run­time of the 1943 orig­i­nal, fig­ures such as Quentin Taran­ti­no have pon­dered as to what sort of per­ver­si­ty Hitch­cock might have giv­en us if he wasn’t behold­en to his era’s con­ser­v­a­tive Hays Code restric­tions. What images could cinema’s great­est per­vert, for instance, be able to con­jure if he was allowed to explic­it­ly depict scenes of sex and violence?

Park trans­pos­es the psy­chol­o­gy of Hitchcock’s film to a sto­ry with much more fren­zied plot­ting, allow­ing a teenage girl’s bur­geon­ing attrac­tion to her uncle to devel­op into some­thing much more trans­gres­sive. Through­out the film, Char­lie is pre­sent­ed as an elu­sive object of desire, not just to Eve­lyn, but to a whole bus­load of school­girls who blush over him as he tails India home in his Jaguar con­vert­ible. To his niece though, the death that Char­lie brings to the Stok­er house is less of a shat­ter­ing of child­hood inno­cence like in Shad­ow of a Doubt, but rather a cat­a­lyst for India’s own twist­ed form of sex­u­al maturity.

Nat­u­ral­ly, Park explores these ideas with­out the restraints Hitch­cock was bound to, using his mas­tery of cam­er­a­work and edit­ing to con­nect India’s acute ado­les­cent sens­es with the rapid­ly grow­ing blood­lust that Char­lie brings out of her. It leads to what may be the film’s most mem­o­rable scene, one that strad­dles the line between provo­ca­tion and inti­ma­cy. After a late-night dal­liance with local school­boy Whip (Alden Ehren­re­ich) goes wrong, we’re once again placed in India’s point of view, watch­ing as Whip vio­lent­ly tries to rape her. In the fore­ground though, we see a shad­owy fig­ure approach­ing with a leather belt in hand.

What hap­pens next is only relayed to us lat­er through mon­tage, as we watch India rush into her white-tiled bath­room and hop straight into the show­er. As she stands under the stream of water, it soon becomes clear that India is per­form­ing an act of self-plea­sure, not to the image of any par­tic­u­lar man, but to the crack of Whip’s neck under­neath Charlie’s leather belt, a death that is revealed to have occurred mere inch­es from her face. Link­ing India’s erot­ic mem­o­ry of mur­der to a phys­i­cal sex­u­al release high­lights Charlie’s true role in the film; not as a lover or even a men­tor but as a con­duit for India to live out her vio­lent fantasies.

For India though, to be adult is to be free”, so as the film comes to a close Park crafts a finale that allows India to achieve true auton­o­my; one that cul­mi­nates with the girl com­mit­ting her own act of mur­der and final­ly eman­ci­pat­ing her­self from the con­fines of the Stok­er house.

Yet, as she races towards New York in her uncle’s Jaguar con­vert­ible, she’s wear­ing Richard’s belt tied around Evelyn’s blouse, and most inter­est­ing­ly, the pair of stilet­tos gift­ed to her by Char­lie after Whip’s death. Like most com­ing-of-age films, the young pro­tag­o­nist takes pieces of their fam­i­ly with them on their jour­neys out into the world. But in Stok­er, Charlie’s thirst for vio­lence might be India’s great­est inher­i­tance. Who knows what these desires might lead to in the future? Blood has nev­er looked so bright.

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