(4/5)

A touch of domestic thriller, a touch of class struggle, a touch of madness, a touch of eroticism, a touch of mind games, and a touch of WTF – yep, that’s about what I was hoping for out of this film, a remake of a landmark Korean film, controversial upon its 1960 release for its frank sexuality and incisive look at dysfunctional household politics. The eponymous housemaid is the young girl Eun-yi brought into help the existing older cook/maid Byung-sik as Haera, the lady of the house, comes closer to bearing a set of twins. Eun-yi makes fast friends with the family’s young daughter, but relations with the rest of the household are a bit more…complex. Especially after the cocky husband Hoon comes to the maid for sexual gratification in the final weeks of his wife’s pregnancy.

Things turn from bad to worse after that, as Haera’s mother comes to take care of Eun-yi for fear of scandal. Tied up in all of this is the thoughtlessness of the upper classes, the bitterness of the working class (portrayed by Byung-sik, who is pretty awesome), and the very slim hope that the next generation, represented by the child, may somehow escape this nearly silent but deadly warfare. The balance in the story between the family and their servants is well-done; though the family is obviously infected with entitlement issues and treat their staff with unthinking condescension, they’re not particularly cruel, nor are the staff long-suffering saints. Even though we don’t know precisely the back history between the family and Byung-sik, her bitterness towards them is much more acidic than their treatment of her – her feelings about them are summed up with the acronym R.U.N.S.: “revolting, ugly, nauseating, shameless.” Yet neither side has any thought for change – both take the position that “this is what these people are like” toward the other.

The exception is when Haera’s mother shows up; she actually is kind of evil and highly manipulative. So much so that I rather expected her to have some even more insidious plot in mind when she starts going after Eun-yi – my imagination came up with at least two or three plot twists suggested by her behaviour, none of which actually came to pass in what turned out to be a fairly straight forward narrative, at least right up until the end, when a bit of over the top and nearly surreal business came into play. The end is perhaps a bit of a tonal shift from the rest, but in another sense, it just took what is already implicitly absurd about this household’s interrelations and made it explicit. For the most part, though, the interest here is in the subtle ways the four women vie for power within the domestic setting.

The acting is quite good, subtle and understated for the most part, with Yeo-Jong Yun especially standing out as Byung-sik. She’s the first to discover the affair and she actually does almost too good a job of playing it on the line between keeping the secret and using it for her own ends – I was never quite sure what her motivations were, which I believe was intentional. I don’t think anyone else in the story was, either. Jung-Jae Lee has mostly a thankless role as Hoon, but he surprised me with a couple of responsible character moments, though too late in the events of the film to do any real good. Do-yeon Jeon had to take Eun-yi from cheery innocent to essentially batshit crazy, and handled that all with aplomb. Matching them is strong direction from Sang-so Im and some really lovely cinematography bathing the household with lush, high-contrast lighting. I’m not sure the film is a total success (I do wish the narrative had been a little more clear in the middle), but it definitely had enough of a powerful drive to it to keep me intrigued and entertained and thinking about it for days afterwards.

The Housemaid is in limited theatrical release and on IFC On Demand.

Writer/Director: Sang-soo Im
Starring: Do-yoen Jeon, Jung-Jae Lee, Yeo-Jong Yun, Seo Woo
Country: South Korea
Year: 2010
Running Time: 106min.