- Running time:
- 106 minutes
- Cast:
- Do-yeon Jeon -
- Eun-yi
- Jung-Jae Lee -
- Hoon
- Yeo-Jong Yun -
- Byung-sik
- Seo Woo -
- Haera
- Yeo-jeong Yoon -
- Byeong-sik
- Director:
- Sang-soo Im
- Overall User Rating:
-
(0 ratings)
Young innocent Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yeon) experiences a series of shocks when she takes a job as housemaid for an extremely wealthy couple. She clashes with the bitter, older maid (Yoon Yeo-jeong), becomes a sexual plaything for the family patriarch (Lee Jung-jae) and an object of ridicule for the matriarch (Seo Woo).
The buzz: Controversial in its home country of South Korea, “The Housemaid”—which premiered in competition at the 2010 Cannes film festival—is a remake of a 1960 South Korea classic of the same name. Director Im Sang-soo is best known for “The President’s Last Bang” and “A Good Lawyer’s Wife,” while leading lady Jeon won best actress at Cannes for the 2007 film “Secret Sunshine.”
The verdict: “The Housemaid” occupies a space between high-end art film and salacious softcore soap opera—full of surprisingly explicit sex scenes, sadistic plot turns and class warfare. It’s never boring, but the overheated melodrama tends to turn the characters into cartoons and demeans whatever points the film hopes to make about upper class exploitation. It doesn’t help that Jeon can’t quite bring a cardboard character to life. Better to focus on the work of two older co-stars: Park Ji-young as a chillingly conniving mother-in-law and Yoon as the burnt out domestic worker who dispenses numerous choice adjectives—revolting, ugly, nauseating, shameless—to describe how she feels about her job. “The Housemaid” matches the flesh, if not the flash, of another recent sexually-charged Korean import—the vampire thriller “Thirst.” But that film had a haunting quality that lingered in the memory. The shallow pleasures of “The Housemaid” are only fun while they last.
Did you know? The original “Housemaid” is available for free viewing online at mubi.com.
Add a comment
Please log in to comment