A glossy, tawdry thriller that barely scratches the surface of its upstairs-downstairs dynamics, The Housemaid – a flamboyantly melodramatic remake of Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film of the same name – charts a household thrown into turmoil after the hiring of a new maid. That woman, Eun-yi (Secret Sunshine’s Jeon Do-yeon), is first spied blowing bubblegum bubbles, thereby establishing the ditzy immaturity that she continues to exhibit after being hired by a wealthy family to tend to their immense mansion and their polite, caring young daughter Nami (Ahn Seo-hyeon). Begrudgingly mentored by older servant Byeong-sik (Yoon Yeo-jeong) and treated like an inhuman robot by her pregnant-with-twins employer Hae Ra (Seo Woo) and her silver-spoon husband Hoon (Lee Jung-jae), Eun-yi goes about her business with docile professionalism until, one evening, Hoon spies her washing a tub and, soon afterwards, seduces her. Eun-yi’s willingness to carry on this torrid affair leads to grave complications once Byeong-sik observes that Eun-yi is pregnant, and Hae Ra’s dragon-lady mother (Park Ji-young) schemes to resolve this thorny situation via violence, a scenario that director Sang-soo shoots sleekly but fails to imbue with any serious social-gender significance. Rather, the callous exploitation of the working class, and Eun-yi’s resultant rebellion, is milked mainly for eroticized suspense, of which there’s just enough to help keep the proceedings from falling into a torpor, and which reaches an apex during a fiery climax and an outdoor birthday-celebration coda that – with mom crooning like Marilyn Monroe and cigar-chomping dad cackling with approval as the staff blankly stands by – exudes a surreal sense of deranged domestic privilege.
Post a comment
Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.
Your Information
(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)
Comments