Korean Erotic Thriller ‘The Housemaid’ Offers Twisted Ride

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Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Movies don’t get much weirder than “The Housemaid.” And I mean that in a good way. Mostly. The extreme Gothic elements of this twisted thriller work even if the ludicrous finale somewhat falls apart on recollection. “The Housemaid” opens this week at the Music Box Theater in Chicago after playing the International Film Festival in October 2010.

South Korea has one of the most vibrant cinematic outputs going right now with filmmakers like Park Chan-wook (“Thirst”), Bong Joon-ho (“Mother”), and Kim Ji-woon (“The Good The Bad The Weird”) delivering some of my favorite films of the last several years. Now we can add Im Sang-soo to the list of filmmakers to watch. While his “The Housemaid” doesn’t live up to the other Korean offerings mentioned in this paragraph, it does display a talented director with a unique voice who will be worth watching in the future. It’s promising without being quite as brilliant as it sometimes threatens to be.

The Housemaid
Photo credit: IFC Films

“The Housemaid” is a totally wacko erotic thriller that forces one to wonder if it would be playing anywhere but pay cable if it were in English. But it’s in Korean, so it’s an art movie! In all seriousness, this is well-done lunacy. Just because “The Housemaid” is filled with ridiculously overheated sexual dialogue, a mother out of “Mommie Dearest,” and an ending that should produce a cross-section of laughter and gasps at its sheer audacity, doesn’t mean the directorial talent on display should be dismissed. This is certainly not a movie for everyone and it’s far from flawless, but it’s unlike anything else you could see in a Chicago movie theater this weekend. Or most other ones this year.

The plot of “The Housemaid,” a remake of a 1960 film of the same name, is simple enough. A rich patriarch named Hoon (Lee Jung-jae) hires a new housemaid/au pair named Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yeon) to watch his daughter Nami while his wife Hae Ra (Seo Woo) is pregnant with twins. It’s not long before Hoon is sleeping with the nanny and not long after that before the poor girl gets pregnant. Another live-in maid (Yoon Yeo-jeong) and Hoon’s Lady Macbeth-esque mother (Park Ji-young) conspire to essentially ruin the housemaid’s life and drive her crazy.

The Housemaid
Photo credit: IFC Films

“The Housemaid” never loses traction. You certainly won’t be bored. Having said that, Im Sang-soo kind of loses the pacing of the piece a few times, alternating film styles from serious drama to extreme gothic (I loved how the mother-in-law is framed with flames behind her as if she sprung straight from Hell) to bizarre erotic moments. It’s inconsistent tonally. And Eun-yi is underwritten. Does she love Hoon? What motivates her final actions? It’s hard to tell.

Despite its flaws, “The Housemaid” works for the audience that will trudge out in the great storm of 2011 to see a Korean erotic thriller. It’s an entertaining, original piece that you won’t soon forget. Go dig out the car.

Official Synopsis:
“A favorite at this year’s Cannes, Toronto and Fantastic film festivals, THE HOUSEMAID is a stylish, sexy thriller about an innocent young woman caught in the twisted web of a rich family’s games.

Eun-yi is hired as a nanny in a lavish mansion by businessman Hoon and his very pregnant wife, Hae-ra. When Eun-yi is seduced by the father of the house, she becomes the unwitting victim in a serious of traps laid by the women of the house - Hae-ra, her villainous mother, and their seemingly loyal but increasingly bitter housekeeper. Intensely erotic and fiendishly entertaining, THE HOUSEMAID builds to an unforgettable climax as Eun-yi must outwit them and escape their schemes to protect her sanity - and her life - from the vicious family.”

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com