The Housemaid

In this erotic thriller, the housemaid of an upper-class family becomes entangled in a dangerous tryst. A satirical look at class structure, reminiscent of the work of Claude Chabrol, this sexy soap opera is a story of revenge and retribution.
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Elegant, sexy and dangerous, The Housemaid is a delicious pleasure to watch. The premise is classic: a cold husband, a fragile wife and a new housemaid. But with one of Korea’s master stylists at the helm and a performance from a best-actress prize winner at Cannes, this polished thriller offers plenty of surprises.
Eun-yi (Jeon Do-youn, Cannes winner for Secret Sunshine) plays an innocent young woman who accepts a job working as a nanny and maid for a very wealthy family. The housewife who hires her (Seo Woo) is young and beautiful, but vulnerable in her pregnancy.Her mother has successfully married her off to a rich, powerful, cultivated man –he plays classical piano as if conducting surgery – but remains aware of how tentative her daughter’s position is. Both women depend on the income and the mercy of the man of the house. But Hoon (Lee Jung-jae) is exacting in his standards.
All the more surprising then, that his eye comes to rest on Eun-yi. A working class woman still a little rough around the edges,she looks overwhelmed by the modernist mansion she now works in, but when Hoon approaches her for a swift seduction, she turns out to be his match. The women of the house, though, prove to be a greater challenge.
It has been fifty years since director Kim Ki-young first told this story in his original thriller of the same name (recently restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation). The contemporary Korean master Im Sangsoo retains the charge of the first film but reverses the power dynamics in fascinating ways. No longer is this the story of a scheming femme fatale bringing down a wholesome marriage. Instead, Im turns it into a face-off between one family’s ruthless wealth and the cunning of an ordinary woman.
With its glossy surfaces and startling sensuality, The Housemaid is sure to raise pulses as it proceeds from decadence to danger to a jaw-dropping climax.