Review of The Housemaid (2010) by Susan C — 04 Feb 2011

2.5 Stars out of 4.

I'm not sure how to write my review of Sang-soo Im's remake of The Housemaid (originally from 1960 by Ki-young Kim). I watched this film confounded, not sure what I just saw but not exactly pleased. The film is startling concerned with symbolism, surrealism, and eroticism. Are these motifs effective? Up until a point, when The Housemaid becomes tiring, and dare I say, obfuscating.

It is not a totally unnecessary remake. Sang-soo is well in-control of the beautiful cinematography and creates a noir-esque elegance that is amazingly shown through the supple decor of the mansion. Sang-soo has also changed the context: we are dealing with an upper class Korean family, not middle class (which was explored in the original). Sang-soo insists this is an implication of the rising wealth in Korean society, in contrast to 50 years ago, when Korea was pre-occuppied with poverty and economic turmoil.

So we have a very traditional family: husband Hoon (Lee Jung-jae), wife Hae-ra (Seo Woo), and daughter (Youn Yuh-jung). This is a complacent, maybe too hermetic family living in idleness. Hae-ra ponders commercial goods, while she is pregnant with twins. Hoon expects the world to fall in his hands and sex to come to him like the news. The daughter? Well she is well-kept but kind of pointless and has this intractability we wish was explored more.

But the key character is the housemaid - Eun-yi (Jeon Do-youn). She does everything right for a nanny; she is subservient, efficient, and hard-working. But there is an awkwardness in her presence, and it is Hae-ra's mother (Park Ji-young) and Mrs. Cho (Yun Yeo-jong) who are au courant of this matter. But these two women are very different: the mother is positive and pleased to see her daughter happily married. Mrs. Cho is bitter, but still gets the job done.

This is a complicated plot. Too riddled for me to care. It is not the surrealism that perplexed me, it was Sang-soo's direction, who arranges the scenes so that they progress in oscillation. There is no flow and The Housemaid readily discombobulates.

But of course there is sex involved. Hoon seduces Eun-yi into an uncomfortable but definitely erotic moment. She enjoys it, too much so that - oops - she gets pregnant. Mrs. Cho and the mother of course are aware of this infidelity and the rest of the film dwells on the suppression of lies and guilt.

The Housemaid is a perplexing, if tedious film about sex as fickleness and love as obligation. It tells much about a culture that is emotionally constrained (at least how this film assumes so). The family sits in the room without even talking to each other, the housemaid enters, serves food, and soon departs in silence. The husband has a couture wardrobe and that epitomizes his stubborn drive for...everything.

So I hope I have explained the film well. You may not understand the ending. I certainly did not. There are moments of combustion and unremarkable irony. So The Housemaid is a half-respectable movie with noble efforts to compel us, but it obscures too much of itself with arbitrary pacing and incoherent storytelling. This is a remake, so it is going through most motions that have already been repeated. By a film that has been hailed a masterpiece. This one: good luck finding the brilliance.