The Housemaid (2011): B

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.