Building on the notable commercial success of Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003) and Bong Joon-ho's The Host (2006) and Mother (2009), South Korea has risen in stature as the country to beat for a brand of innovative, stylish thriller that was once the province of the ailing Japanese film industry. The rare foreign country in which homegrown movies out-gross the Hollywood juggernauts on a routine basis, Korean films offer a true challenge to the stagnant formulas found in American color-by-numbers thrillers. Martin Scorsese's "Film Foundation" has recently restored Ki-young Kim's 1960 touchstone The Housemaid, one of the bona fide classics of cinema in a year that saw many (Psycho, Peeping Tom, Breathless, et al.). Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho raised the ire of film purists everywhere, but Americans unfamiliar with the original won't blink an eye at Sang-soo Im's audacious 2010 re-imagining of The Housemaid.
Updating the concerns of 1960, the central figure of the tale is no longer a young girl infatuated with and seducing a teacher, bringing ruin to his modest-living family. Now, the "young girl" is undone by a sexual power play by her wealthy boss and his sinister family in a storyline tailored to our modern fears of the ascendency of the uber-wealthy and issues of control over a woman's body.
An ominous opening sees an unnamed woman plunge to her death on a bustling city street, her chalk outline drawing the morbid interest of attractive restaurant grunt Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yeon). At the crime scene she picks up a flyer advertising the need for a nanny to the daughter of power couple Hoon (actor/male model Lee Jung-jae) and his very pregnant, spoiled wife Haera (devil pixie Woo Seo). In the sort of luxurious home seemingly built for a thriller (the coldness, the height of the stairs), Eun-yi cares for a little girl trained in politeness and formality by her Tiger Parents. The old housemother "Mrs. Cho" (Korean mainstay Yeo Jong-Yun in the movie's only complex performance) holds more family secrets than they realize; lurking around every corner she echoes the creepy Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock's Rebecca.
Mrs. Cho is the only one who knows that Hoon has begun an affair with his new employee. Their tryst is observed with voyeuristic steadiness, providing much needed primal energy to an otherwise distant film. It is odd that the recent drama Blue Valentine was saddled with an unwarranted NC-17 rating when the desperate rutting in The Housemaid is equally explicit though lacking the rich background of a couple navigating their failing marriage. Hoon and Eun-yi's impersonal lack of chemistry makes it safer to enjoy their soft-core bouts without the discomforts of reality, excepting that pesky bit when Eun-yi gets pregnant. Once Mrs. Cho finds out about the pregnancy and rats Eun-yi out to Haera and her mother, the real fun begins. Blissfully unaware, Hoon retires to his vintage wines and classical piano, while betrayed "Bridezilla" Haera and her comically villainous mother plot to get rid of the baby in order to maintain the family's social status.
If a hallmark of a good suspense flick is its ending, this one achieves levels of greatness in its final berserk moments (NO SPOILERS AHEAD). Eun-yi remains frustratingly meek throughout, enduring Haera's abuse without fighting back, but her final act is appropriately over-the-top. What really lingers in the mind though is a brief coda in the style of a surrealist like David Lynch, mocking privileged life with a strange wit so fresh that it is too bad the rest of the movie was not shot through the same playful lens.
As we have seen in recent American horror, opulent homes are a magnet for unholy mischief – be it the secluded digs of the family terrorized in Orphan (2009) or the Frank Lloyd Wright fortress in the remake of When a Stranger Calls (2006), rich people are under constant attack on movie screens. But, while Hollywood sympathizes with the plight of the WASP in peril, beset by psychos and tricky foreigners, The Housemaid explores the sinister impunity of "new money" creeps. Make no mistake, even though Haera and her icy mother plot against poor Eun-yi, none of their vile behaviors would be possible without Hoon's money. So, go for the polished, sexy thriller and stay for the subversive social commentary.
Rating: THREE BONES
Release Date: February 25th, 2011 at the Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak, Michigan and in limited release across the country
Rating: Unrated
Starring: Jeon Do-yeon, Lee Jung-Jae, Woo Seo, Park Ji-young, Yeo Jong-Yun, and Seo-Hyun Ahn
Director: Sang-soo Im
Writers: Ki-young Kim and Sang-soo Im
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