After A Tale of Two Sisters, Parasite and Oldboy I thought Korean films all had elements of horror, tension and violence and while this one certainly does (along with a fairly liberal smattering of nudity and lesbian sex), it was much more an operatic melodrama, the kind of thing Daphne du Maurier would have written about set in a gothic castle overlooking a windswept ocean.

Sook-Hee (Kim Tae-ri) is hired to be the help for a rich Japanese heiress, Hideko (Kim Min-hee) who lives like a Disney princess, locked away in a grand manor in the country by her industrialist Uncle Kozuki (Cho Jin-woong), a fearsome man who's raised her with an iron fist to be a perfectly educated but pliable lady.

Uncle Kozuki's line of work is forgeries of great erotic literature, holding reading parties where he gathers rich friends and customers on his estate while Hideko reads the books he's hawking like performance art, getting the elderly clientele into enough of a lather to part with their money.

But Sook-Hee is also a swindler, a pick pocket recruited by con man Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) to pose as a handmaiden in order to encourage/convince the heiress to fall in love with Fujiwara while he poses as a visiting Count, intending to steal her away, have her locked in an asylum and claim her fortune for himself and Sook-Hee.

But Sook-Hee is as impressionable as she is shifty, and when she starts to see the reality of Hideko's life, the cruelty she's endured and the freedom she craves, she starts to fall in love with the Japanese woman herself, faltering in her mission to make Hideko fall in love with Fujiwara.

And when Hideko tentatively but passionately respond to Sook-Hee's feelings, it makes it even harder. When the sting comes – Fujiwara and Sook-Hee driving Hideko to the hospital where she doesn't know she's about to be committed – Sook-Hee is torn by her conscience at what she's about to do to the woman she loves.

But at the last minute, Hideko instead speaks up, telling the orderlies and nurses that it's Sook-Hee who's being committed. Confused and terrified, the young woman is grabbed, bundled up and dragged inside screaming, her eyes pleading with Hideko for an explanation while Fujiwara coolly looks on, apparently in on the double cross.

The second half explains Hideko's part in the plan. After years of physical and psychological abuse, being forced to read sadistic porn by her Uncle – following her loving Aunt's suicide, when she couldn't take it any more – Hideko finds Fujiwara and hatches the plan to escape along with him to split their Uncle's fortune.

I won't say how as it'll blow the entire second part and conclusion of the movie, but it descends into a quagmire of desire, jealousy, brutality and scheming that involves enough dangerous personalities to ensure someone might get killed if it all goes wrong.

It's a sweeping epic of lust, intrigue and drama with big characters and big stakes. All that was missing was a thunderstorm outside the windows as a lady from the nobility hurried along an ornate hallway with a candelabra in her hand and a pensive look on her face.

It's beautifully shot, with very attractive leads and a Hitchockian structure that unpeels what's really going on, and despite the extravagance and somewhat emotional overwroughtness, it'll keep you guessing and interested.