The Housemaid

The Housemaid-The King and I and I

Directed by Im Sang-soo.

Starring Jeon Do-yeon, Lee Jung-jae  Seo Woo and Yoon Yeo-jeong

First off let me say loudly, this thing is a sizzler. This film is worth twice the price of admission and although you’ll pay for a whole seat, you’ll probably just use the edge of it. The latest work from the “South Korean Oliver Stone” Im Sang-soo, The Housemaid, is a refreshing, engaging and often times hilarious exploration into class, power and intensely sweaty sex scenes between Asian Übermensches.

The film opens with a glorious tour of South Korean nightlife where food, live produce and menial workers all intertwine to form the engine that drives the rest of the hungry polis. The look and feel of the film is sharp and sparklingly clear. It has touches of the above mentioned Stone in it’s camera work and seems to tip it’s bamboo Gat to the flowing and gliding cinematography of Kubrick’s The Shining and Scorsese’s Goodfellas. There are no gangsters present, but the use of the techniques, give the very ordinary settings a virulently sexy and vibrant feel.

We follow Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yeon), a permanent and obscurely happy member of the South Korean working class as she leaves her job as chief bottle washer and floor scrubber to become the live in Nanny of two of the wealthiest and most glamorous people on the face of the Asian peninsula. She is to be mother to the couples young daughter and fast approaching twins, who wait patiently inside the enormous belly of the tiny and mesmerizingly beautiful Hae Ra (Seo Woo). Hae Ra is married to the wealthy and mysterious Hoon (Lee Jung-jae)  who is a devoted, egomaniacal high achiever, whose chief interests seem to be Beethoven, red wine and extra marital affairs.

Eun-yi is paired with an older female servant and master cook, Byeong-sik, (Yoon Yeo-jeong) whose delicious performance goes very close to stealing the entire film. We then watch as Eun-yi settles into her new role in a very foreign world. What follows is a film noir pyschological power play between the characters who drift in and out of control, of both themselves and with each other. People creep around in the night, hover outside bedroom doors, turn blind eyes to things they shouldn’t see and turn themselves over (sometimes literally) to things they really shouldn’t be turning themselves over to.

The film does have a slight drop in pace over the half way mark, which turns the otherwise slick and enchanting picture into soap opera territory. This is a shame as the delicateness and unique human characteristics shown by the individual players throughout the majority of the film, really serves to lift it beyond a “run of the mill” thriller. It could perhaps have benefitted from being trimmed ever so slightly before the last act in order for it to consistently maintain the bizarre and unusual qualities it otherwise displays.

But we are not weighed down for long as the curious film steams ahead with full force and reckless abandon to deliver a mind blowing ending, full of madness, desperation and intrigue, worthy of everything that has come before it. A Sizzler.