Directed by Volker Schlöndorff, the film stars Natasha Richardson (Offred), Faye Dunaway (Serena Joy), Robert Duvall (The Commander), Aidan Quinn (Nick), and Elizabeth McGovern (Moira).

The film adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale faced numerous challenges in its development, with screenwriter Harold Pinter expressing dissatisfaction with the final product due to significant alterations from his original script.

The film's reception was mixed, with an approval rating of 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, and critics expressing uncertainty about the movie's message and themes.

Although she resists indoctrination into the cult of the Handmaids, which mixes Old Testament orthodoxy with scripted group chanting and ritualized violence, Kate is soon assigned to the home of "the Commander" (Fred) and his cold, inflexible wife, Serena Joy.

Her role as the Fred's latest concubine is emotionless, as she lies between Serena Joy's legs while the Commander rapes her, the couple hoping that she will bear them a child.

Desperately wanting a baby, Serena Joy persuades Kate to risk the punishment for fornication (death by hanging) in order to be fertilized by another man who may impregnate her and consequently spare her life.

Believing the policemen are members of the Eyes, the government's secret police, she realizes that they are soldiers from the resistance movement (Mayday), of which Nick is also a part.

Now free once again and wearing non-uniform clothes, but facing an uncertain future, a pregnant Kate is living by herself in a trailer while receiving intelligence reports from the rebels.

… She thought the passages of voice-over narration in the original screenplay would solve the problem, but then Pinter changed his mind and Richardson felt she had been cast adrift.

"Speaking as a member of an audience, I've seen voice-over and narration work very well in films a number of times, and I think it would have been helpful had it been there for The Handmaid's Tale.

Portman does not acknowledge Pinter's already-quoted account that he gave both Schlöndorff and Atwood carte blanche to make whatever changes they wanted to his script because he was too "exhausted" from the experience to work further on it.

"[12] Owen Gleiberman, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a "C−" grade and commented that "visually, it's quite striking", but that it is "paranoid poppycock — just like the book".

[14] The novel does not include the murder of the Commander, and Kate's fate is left completely unresolved—the van waits in the driveway, "and so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light" ([Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986)] 295).

As shot, there is a voice-over in which Kate explains (accompanied by light symphonic music that contrasts with that of the opening scene) that she is now safe in the mountains held by the rebels.

Bolstered by occasional messages from Nick, she awaits the birth of her baby while she dreams about Jill, whom she feels she is going to find eventually.