''The Housemaid'' () is a 2010 South Korean
erotic psychological thriller
Psychological thriller is a genre combining the thriller and psychological fiction genres. It is commonly used to describe literature or films that deal with psychological narratives in a thriller or thrilling setting.
In terms of context and c ...
film directed by
Im Sang-soo
Im Sang-soo (born April 27, 1962) is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. He has twice been invited to compete for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, with '' The Housemaid'' in 2010 and ''The Taste of Money'' in 2012.
Early li ...
. The story focuses on Eun-yi, played by
Jeon Do-yeon
Jeon Do-yeon (; born February 11, 1973) is a South Korean actress. She won Best Actress at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, making her the second Korean actress to win an acting award at a prestigious film festival, and Best Performance by an Ac ...
, who becomes involved in a destructive love triangle while working as a housemaid for an upper-class family. Other cast members include
Lee Jung-jae
Lee Jung-jae (; born December 15, 1972) is a South Korean actor and filmmaker. Considered one of the most successful actors in South Korea, he has received various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cri ...
,
Youn Yuh-jung
Youn Yuh-jung (, ; born June 19, 1947) is a South Korean actress, whose career in film and television spans over five decades. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a British Academy Film Award, an Independent Spir ...
and
Seo Woo
Seo Woo (born Kim Moon-joo; July 7, 1985) is a South Korean actress. She made her breakthrough with the film '' Crush and Blush'' (2008). She is best known for her roles in the films ''Paju'' and '' The Housemaid'', as well as her roles in the TV ...
. The film is a
remake of
Kim Ki-young
Kim Ki-young (October 10, 1919According to official documents, Kim was born in 1919. However, Kim insisted he was actually born in 1922. – February 5, 1998) was a South Korean film director, known for his intensely psychosexual and melod ...
's 1960 film
of the same name. It competed for the
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
at the
2010 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
The film opens with a bustling city street, where a young woman commits suicide by jumping from a building ledge to her death. Eun-yi, who works in a restaurant, persuades her coworker and roommate to drive her to the scene of the suicide, and she stands distraught over the chalk outline where the woman's body had lain. The next morning, an older woman by the name of Byeong-sik visits her small apartment and later expresses interest in giving her a job.
Eun-yi is hired as an
au pair
An au pair (; plural: au pairs) is a helper from a foreign country working for, and living as part of, a host family. Typically, au pairs take on a share of the family's responsibility for childcare as well as some housework, and receive a mon ...
for Hae-ra (pregnant with twins) and her rich husband Hoon. Eun-yi's primary task is watching the couple's young daughter, Nami. Eun-yi is eager to connect to Nami, who gradually warms to her. Hoon begins to secretly flirt with Eun-yi, enticing her with glasses of wine and his piano playing, and they eventually begin a sexual relationship. Despite the affair, Eun-yi is still warm and friendly to Hoon's oblivious wife, Hae-ra; she even expresses enthusiasm and delight at the progress of Hae-ra's pregnancy.
Byeong-sik, aka "Miss Cho" (the other live-in maid, originally Hae-ra's childhood maid) witnesses Eun-yi and Hoon having sex. She tries to subtly pry details from Eun-yi, but Eun-yi brushes her off casually. Later, Miss Cho reveals her suspicion that Eun-yi is pregnant to Hae-ra's mother, Mi-hee. Mi-hee then visits the family and stages an "accident," resulting in Eun-yi falling from a ladder positioned at the top of a set of stairs. Dangling from a chandelier, Eun-yi begs Mi-hee to pull her over the railing. She does not oblige, and Eun-yi falls. Suffering only a
concussion, Eun-yi spends the night in the hospital. During her stay, she learns that she is pregnant and contemplates
abortion
Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pre ...
. Meanwhile, the affair is revealed to Hae-ra.
Mi-hee instructs Hae-ra to ignore the affair; she insists that all wealthy husbands will eventually cheat and that if Hae-ra ignores it she can "live like a queen." Later that night, Hae-ra stands over Eun-yi's bed with a golf club but is unable to strike the sleeping woman. The next day, Hae-ra and her mother confront Eun-yi, offering her $100,000 to have an abortion and leave. Hae-ra knows that Eun-yi would not abort her child "for all the money in the world," so she takes matters into her own hands by poisoning the herbal medicine packets Eun-yi drinks every day. Hae-ra goes to the hospital and delivers her twin sons. Hoon visits the hospital, where Hae-ra makes her ill will toward him known. Furious, he returns home alone and finds Eun-yi in his bathtub. She reveals that she is pregnant and plans on keeping the baby.
Eun-yi falls unconscious to the effects of the poison, and Mi-hee arranges an abortion without Eun-yi's consent. After the abortion, Miss Cho reveals that she told Mi-hee about Eun-yi's pregnancy. Eun-yi is angry, but forgives Miss Cho and vows to get revenge on the family. After recovering from her abortion, Eun-yi sneaks into the house with Miss Cho's assistance. Hoon finds her
breastfeeding
Breastfeeding, or nursing, is the process by which human breast milk is fed to a child. Breast milk may be from the breast, or may be expressed by hand or pumped and fed to the infant. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that br ...
one of the newborn babies. Hae-ra insists that Miss Cho chase Eun-yi out of the house, but Miss Cho refuses and quits her job on the spot. Eun-yi then confronts the entire family (Hae-ra, Mi-hee, Hoon, and Nami), hanging herself from the same chandelier she once clung to, then lighting her body on fire as the family watches in horror.
The final scene depicts the family outdoors in the snow celebrating Nami's birthday, all speaking English. While Hae-ra sings "Happy Birthday", Hoon hands a glass of champagne to Nami. Both appear insane as Nami looks on.
Beth Accomando of
KPBS described the story as "a seductive and disquieting thriller in which overt violence is rare but ruthless manipulation and a callous lack of concern for people are commonplace."
Cast
*
Jeon Do-yeon
Jeon Do-yeon (; born February 11, 1973) is a South Korean actress. She won Best Actress at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, making her the second Korean actress to win an acting award at a prestigious film festival, and Best Performance by an Ac ...
as Eun-yi
*
Lee Jung-jae
Lee Jung-jae (; born December 15, 1972) is a South Korean actor and filmmaker. Considered one of the most successful actors in South Korea, he has received various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cri ...
as Hoon
** Lee stated that Hoon uses "unexpected behavior", as in taking actions that the women around him would not expect him to take, in order to maintain his power in an environment filled with assertive women.
Lee added that Hoon's negative reaction to Hae-ra arranging for Eun-yi's abortion without his input as an example of a person being "capable of such selfishness and duplicity, pretending to put someone else's interests first but thinking only of themselves."
[
* ]Youn Yuh-jung
Youn Yuh-jung (, ; born June 19, 1947) is a South Korean actress, whose career in film and television spans over five decades. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a British Academy Film Award, an Independent Spir ...
as Byeong-sik
* Seo Woo
Seo Woo (born Kim Moon-joo; July 7, 1985) is a South Korean actress. She made her breakthrough with the film '' Crush and Blush'' (2008). She is best known for her roles in the films ''Paju'' and '' The Housemaid'', as well as her roles in the TV ...
as Hae-ra
* Ahn Seo-hyun
Ahn Seo-hyun (born January 12, 2004) is a South Korean actress. She began her career as a child actress in 2008, and has since appeared in films and television series such as '' The Housemaid'' (2010), '' Single-minded Dandelion'' (2014) and th ...
as Nami
* Park Ji-young as Mi-hee
* Moon So-ri
Moon So-ri (born July 2, 1974) is a South Korean actress, film director and screenwriter. She is best known for her acclaimed leading roles in '' Oasis'' (2002) and '' A Good Lawyer's Wife'' (2003).
Career
After graduating with a degree in Ed ...
as Obstetrician
Accomando compared several characters to those in ''The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby ...
'' and stated that they "are only concerned with themselves and the image of perfection they present."[
]
Production
An early draft of the screenplay was written by Kim Soo-hyun
Kim Soo-hyun (; born February 16, 1988) is a South Korean actor. One of the highest-paid actors in South Korea, his accolades include four Baeksang Arts Awards, two Grand Bell Awards and one Blue Dragon Film Award. From 2012 to 2016 and in ...
, but after director Im Sang-soo had edited the script so heavily that Kim considered it to be entirely Im's own work, she decided to leave the project and publicly expressed her dissatisfaction. Although the film includes some key elements of the original, Kim Ki-young
Kim Ki-young (October 10, 1919According to official documents, Kim was born in 1919. However, Kim insisted he was actually born in 1922. – February 5, 1998) was a South Korean film director, known for his intensely psychosexual and melod ...
's '' The Housemaid'' from 1960, Im has said that he tried to never think of it during the production in order to come up with a modern and original work. One major difference between the versions is that the original film took place in the middle class, while the remake is set in an extreme upper-class environment. Im explains this with South Korea's social structure around 1960, which was a time when the country's middle class started to form and many poor people moved from the countryside to work in the cities: "women became housemaids who served not only for the rich but also the middle class and that issue had served as the basis to Kim Ki-young's work. What I realized upon reworking ''The Housemaid'' in 50 years was that there are much more wealthy people now, people who are millionaires. ... I wanted to depict the reality in which housewives from normal families have to undertake hard work too". The film was produced by the Seoul-based company Mirovision.
Im stated that the design of the house reflects a "traditional European lifestyle" enjoyed by wealthy people around the world in the 2010s and that "Myself, I find it questionable that this would be a life they genuinely enjoy or if it's not more for show."[ In the ]bird's-eye shot
A bird's-eye view is an elevated view of an object or location from a very steep viewing angle, creating a perspective as if the observer were a bird in flight looking downwards. Bird's-eye views can be an aerial photograph, but also a dra ...
s used in the film from time to time, a large ornate chandelier is an observer that looks down on the bourgeois family for which Eun-yi works. It also plays a role in the dramatic and tragic end of the movie's heroine. That chandelier in all its detail is actually a copy of the 2008 work "Song of Dionysus" created by artist Bae Young-whan. The decision to include the chandelier in ''The Housemaid'' was quite a deliberate one. At first glance, the light fixture looks like an elegant Art Nouveau craft, but a closer look reveals that its green glass pieces are actually sharp shards from broken wine and soju
(; Hangul: ; Hanja: ) is a clear and colorless Korean distilled alcoholic beverage. It is usually consumed neat. Its alcohol content varies from about 12.9% to 53% alcohol by volume (ABV), although since 2007 low alcohol soju below 20% h ...
bottles. In the same sense, the high-class family members in the movie look elegant at a glance but are actually selfish and cruel enough to break their housemaid's heart.
In regards to the initial suicide scene, Im stated that the purpose was to show the effect of suicide in Korea and that the audience is unaware of the circumstances of the first suicide like they become with that of the main character, in that members of the general public learn about suicides and then move on with their lives without considering the circumstances of the suicides.[
Im stated that in regards to the birthday party scene, "I wanted audiences to wonder if amicould truly heal from such an event?"][ He added that a producer of the film had unsuccessfully requested its deletion and that "There has been a lot of controversy surrounding that last scene", but that the film "would have been just so-so" if the final scene was deleted.][
There are two scenes within this movie which show a large scar, or burn, on ]Jeon Do-yeon
Jeon Do-yeon (; born February 11, 1973) is a South Korean actress. She won Best Actress at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, making her the second Korean actress to win an acting award at a prestigious film festival, and Best Performance by an Ac ...
's upper thigh. Director Im Sang-soo
Im Sang-soo (born April 27, 1962) is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. He has twice been invited to compete for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, with '' The Housemaid'' in 2010 and ''The Taste of Money'' in 2012.
Early li ...
said, "Jeon Do-yeon does, in fact, have a scar there, and before filming began, she mentioned the scar to me because she knew that there were many scenes involving nudity within the film. I didn't have a problem, or filming issues, with it at all, but as shooting progressed, I felt that the scar matched ideas within the film very well, so it is true that I had a couple of scenes specifically focusing on it. We could have erased it with computer graphics, but I talked to Jeon Do-yeon about it and we both agreed that it matched the film so well that it should be kept in."
Release
The film premiered in South Korea on 13 May 2010. Released by Sidus FNH, it opened on 679 screens and topped the box office chart for the first weekend with a revenue corresponding to around $5.7 million. The number of screens had been reduced to 520 after week two, and ''The Housemaid'' dropped to second place on the chart, having been overtaken by ''How to Train Your Dragon
''How to Train Your Dragon'' (abbreviated ''HTTYD'') is an American media franchise from DreamWorks Animation and loosely based on the eponymous series of children's books by British author Cressida Cowell. It consists of three feature films: ' ...
''. Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is ...
reported a total revenue of $14,075,390 in the film's domestic market. The film had 2,289,709 admissions nationwide being the 10th most attended domestic release of the year. The international premiere took place on 14 May in competition at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. American distribution rights were acquired by IFC Films
IFC Films is an American film production and distribution company based in New York. It is an offshoot of IFC owned by AMC Networks. It distributes mainly independent films under its own name, select foreign films and documentaries under its ...
, who released it in 2011. Latin American distribution rights were acquired by Energia Entusiasta. The film is available in Amazon Prime Video in Latin America.
Reception
Following the screening in Cannes, Maggie Lee of ''The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...
'' called the film "a flamingly sexy soap opera whose satire on high society is sometimes as savage as Claude Chabrol's ''La Cérémonie
''La Cérémonie'' is a 1995 crime drama film by Claude Chabrol, adapted from the 1977 novel ''A Judgement in Stone'' by Ruth Rendell. The film echoes the case of Christine and Lea Papin, two French maids who brutally murdered their employer's wif ...
''". However, Lee also found the film to have several prominent flaws: "plot developments are glaringly melodramatic" and "even with Jeon's calibrated performance, Eun-yi's characterization is problematic... e absence in motivation of her behavior does not really convince". Lee Hyo-won of ''The Korea Times
''The Korea Times'' is the oldest of three English-language newspapers published daily in South Korea. It is a sister paper of the '' Hankook Ilbo'', a major Korean language daily; both are owned by Dongwha Enterprise, a wood-based manufacture ...
'' was all praises, saying that Im "brings a sexy, seamlessly quilted film that throbs with intrigue, lively characters and finely crafted melodrama". In 2014, it made Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
's list of "Top 12 Female Revenge Movies" along with another South Korean film ''Lady Vengeance
''Lady Vengeance'' (; ; titled ''Sympathy for Lady Vengeance'' in Australia and Russia) is a 2005 South Korean psychological thriller film directed by Park Chan-wook. The film is the third and final installment in Park's '' Vengeance Trilogy'', ...
''; with the review "the grim, gleaming Housemaid has a silky thread of tension tightening around the viewer's rooting interest, right up to the cutting revenge Eun-yi takes on her torturers."
The review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
reported that 70% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 70 reviews, with an average rating of 6.74/10. On Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Awards and nominations
See also
* Cinema of South Korea
* List of South Korean films of 2010
This is a list of South Korean films that have received or are due to receive a domestic theatrical release in 2010.
Box office
The highest-grossing South Korean films released in 2010, by domestic box office gross revenue, are as follows:
Re ...
References
Further reading
*
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External links
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Housemaid, The
2010 films
2010s romantic thriller films
Films directed by Im Sang-soo
Remakes of South Korean films
2010s Korean-language films
South Korean erotic thriller films
South Korean romantic thriller films
Maids in films
Films about interclass romance
Film controversies in South Korea
Sidus Pictures films
Georges Delerue Award winners
2010s erotic thriller films
2010s South Korean films
2010s psychological drama films
2010s psychological thriller films