User Reviews

Ki-young Kim's "The Housemaid" proved an interesting viewing experience for me, in that it ultimately differed very much from what I had come to expect about a half hour into the film. What we appear to have here is another film like Joseph Losey's "The Servant", which was a left-wing, revolutionary exercise in which a lower class man enters an upper class household as a servant, and ultimately takes over the bourgeois home, throwing it into upheaval and chaos. Likewise, in "The Housemaid", a young woman joins a wealthier household as a maid, and instantly things begin to take a turn toward disorder and familial disintegration. It could easily be a revolutionary, communist film like Losey's. It is not.

In fact, it is the polar opposite. It turns out that "The Housemaid" is actually an overtly conservative film. This film is undebatably a defense of traditional family values like faithfulness, fidelity, and monogamy. Another film with a virtually identical plot could have just as easily been an attack on those same values. In "The Housemaid", however, the character of the maid is not the instrument of revolution, the hand of Marxist justice that has come to wipe out every trace of bourgeois society from our microcosmic household (e.g. Dirk Bogarde's character in "The Servant"); rather, she is the face of temptation, the tantalizer that will be the destruction of a healthy, happy family, should the patriarchal figure fall into that inescapable abyss of adultery.

Some viewers have interpreted the film in other ways, though I don't see how they could. This isn't that kind of film. There really isn't anything ambiguous here. The only exception — the one place where interpretation of the film's message might become a bit convoluted — is the framing device that Kim uses at the film's bookends. I would note the likelihood that this was added for the sake of the censors. After all, it is somewhat surprising that Kim got this film passed in the first place, and the frame story, which abruptly obliterates the reality of the film's central storyline, may have been the only reason he was able to do so. Despite my usual partiality for any kind of narrative complexity or nonlinear structure, I felt this device was mildly detrimental to the film's integrity. Regardless, it really doesn't change anything about the nature of the film's message.

Thematically, the key moment in the film comes fairly early on, immediately after the decisive act of infidelity. Kim goes to great lengths to underline this instant as the pivotal moment in the lives of his characters, a moment from which there will be no return. He achieves this rather heavy-handedly, by cutting away from the room in which the action occurs, to a shot of a large tree standing outside the house, which is immediately struck by lightning, as if to make it abundantly clear, written in Fuller-esque boldface type: This is the moment that changes everything! This is the undoing of a family!

It's not a subtle film, needless to say. There are, however, master touches throughout. The cinematography is certainly impressive, as is Kim's direction. The laterally panning shots through the plate glass on the upper floor of the house are fantastic. It is quite a well shot film, and Kim works inspiringly within the limited space of only a few settings.

Dramatically, however, "The Housemaid" was somewhat disappointing. The film can't decide whether it wants to be a Buñuelian art film or a Hitchcockian thriller, and the resulting blend is very uneven, increasingly as the film progresses. Kim never gives this film any real, constant identity. The score was quite poor. With its obtrusive and highly transparent attempts at creating tension and coercing the viewer into a certain emotion, it never ceased to intrude on the viewing experience.

This may be a political film — it certainly has a plainly conservative message — but if it is, it's not because Kim intended it to be. Despite being pressured by his government to foray into political filmmaking on a few occasions, Kim himself was not particularly interested in politics. He once said, "North or south, capitalist or communist, ideology is far less interesting to me than the things that divide the sexes."

Indeed, this is evident in "The Housemaid". Kim is clearly much more interested in the boundaries and barriers between men and women — the impediments that obstruct the path to intimacy and healthy relationships — than he is in any specific political ideology. And this is where the film regains some of its composure. Comparisons have been made to the work of Luis Buñuel and Shôhei Imamura. I can see it, in terms of its portrayal of passion and conflicted attempts at intimacy between the sexes, but on the whole I think those are pretty loose comparisons. "The Housemaid" works best as a psychological drama. When we analyze the motives of the characters, and what drives each of them toward their respective actions, the film comes into focus fairly nicely. When it tries to move into suspense, however, it looses its momentum as a drama, and as a successful, cohesive work of cinema.

All things considered, I think this is a good film. I can't call it a masterpiece, or even a great film, although I know many feel that way about it, but I do think it's quality cinema that's worth seeing. My biggest complaint with the film is its extreme lack of subtlety, in multiple facets of the art of filmmaking. Dramatically, "The Housemaid" goes way over the top one too many times, and thematically, the film essentially boils down to a cautionary tale about adultery and infidelity. Nonetheless, it's a film that deserves to be seen, especially with the relatively small place that South Korea occupies in the cinematic landscape.

RATING: 7.33 out of 10

... and this one truly did besides being as intense a psychological study as Joseph Losey's "The Servant". I am generally unscareable and though I appreciate the talent in films like "The Exorcist" which can frighten others, for me it always falls flat as I must have been born repeating the advertising line from "Last House on the Left" stating "Remember...it is only a movie, it is only a movie." So the fact that this was both fascinating as a character study and scary enough to make one bejeeberless was impressive.

I actually jumped in my seat at one point in "The Housemaid" and will never look at packages of rat poison the same or even filled glasses of water or some simple rice in a bowl. This psychological masterpiece can cause heart palpitations and I can't even imagine it could be improved in a remake. I kept thinking that the "housemaid" and her unfathomable facial expressions were reminiscent of the maid to Francisco Rabal in Bunuel's "Viridiana" and it was fun to hear the post film comments saying Ki-Young was sometimes compared to Luis.

All in all, I'm so glad I stayed up and watched it in the middle of the night. Sure I could have watched it at a different time, but there's something right about watching a film like that in total darkness and my only complaint regarded the end, but I won't quibble since I also dig films like "The Woman in the Window".

I haven't seen before melodrama as stunning, shocking, utterly ridiculous and in full knowledge of it, Korea's cautionary tale answer on marital infidelity to Reefer Madness if it weren't at the same time as cinematically vibrant and obstinate as the best works of Sam Fuller, driven by suspenseful will and heavy with undertones of something at once sinister and horrifying to make you think parts of it were destined at some point for Les Diaboliques or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, as Ki-young Kim's The Housemaid; for all intents and purposes, this is melodrama a-go-go, not in the cosmopolitan sense of the term, but ironic and campy, a dazzling movie steeped in artifice and insanely interesting human behaviour that sets out to provoke and push common sense to a limit.

A well to do couple hires a maid to help out the wife with the chores around the house, but no sooner has she gone into the kitchen to get a glass of water than the entire household threatens to collapse in ruins of rat poison and unwanted pregnancies, illicit thrysts and alliances striken casually and alternatively between the wife and the maid who is now a mistress, the wife and the husband against the maid who they need to be rid off before she talks of the affair, the maid and the husband against each other and their own selves.

The other movie I've seen by Ki-young Kim is, Iodo, a Korean version of The Wicker Man that takes place in a remote island populated exclusively by fisherwomen. It was also utterly bonkers, the most outrageous plotting this side of Italian exploitation, but it lacked the ability to see that in itself, to recognize the madness and defy it. The Housemaid at first seems like the product of Ed Wood incompetence. Some of the dialogue and character behavior had me in stitches. But it soon reveals that to be a facade which the movie can lift and put back in place at whim, so that it can be all things to all people not because of any particular notion of ambiguity shared by Ki-young Kim because the movie is blunt like a hammer in the face, but because it doesn't abide by any notion of common sense or realism unless it wants to. The movie behaves with the same audacity of its maid protagonist. It sets up an image of a socially upwards mobile household where a couple can afford to buy a television even if it means hours of slaving away on a sewing machine to get it, and then affronts it violently, perversely toys with it and corrupts it to the heart.

In the end, if any more clue was required, we get fourth walls broken and a man winking straight at us. This is Panic Theater at its best, with the selfaware avant-garde tropes replaced by unselfconscious soap opera clichés.

Allow me to add to the hype: this film is as delirious as they come. Starting out as a typical realist glance into 1960's South Korea as centered on a upwardly-mobile family, after the plot gets settled, becomes a hysterical and expressionistic tale of corrosive sin and deception. The transformation of one night's flirtation into a grandiose moral eradication is the one of the most stunning turns of atmosphere I've ever seen in a film. Also amazing is how your view of the characters changes dramatically as they are faced with this living hell. While researching about the director, I found out that the actress who played the housemaid, Eun-shim Lee, fulfilled the part so well that she couldn't find work after this movie. Audience members were literally screaming for her death at the original showings! See this film just for her, you won't regret it! I can't say enough great things about the director Kim Ki-young, too bad most of his films aren't available in English!

Not a perfect film, but certainly an intriguing and timely one, coming out at a time when films around the world were breaking boundaries and pushing their subject matter to the next level - think PSYCHO and PEEPING TOM, for instance. This distinctly Korean movie takes a look at issues involving class, gender roles, family dynamics and social norms, all set in a middle class household where the arrival of the titular character explodes tensions and invokes horror all round. Well shot and very well acted, this is occasionally dated and melodramatic, a little slow at times, with an ending that doesn't quite work, but otherwise it's well worth a look.

Sometimes, it's too easy to give abnormally high ratings to films may not necessarily deserve the honor. The good news is that Hanyo (The Housemaid) is the real thing - the kind of rarity that fills the viewer with such astonishment that you talk about it years later.

Kim Ki-young's 1960 masterpiece must be seen at the first possible opportunity -- if you have the luck. This black and white morality tale is pure black comedy, the almost-campy tale of a respectable music teacher whose life is soon complicated with a passion for one of his students. The tone is not unlike a deliciously lurid pre-Code drama about the withering power of vice, but The Housemaid almost takes pleasure at showing the incremental erosion of morality and the corrosiveness of sin. The strange subtitles, some handwritten, only add to the atmosphere. And if you're blown away by the deadpan comedy, prepare yourself for an ending that will leave you slack-jawed for days. The movie's a miracle.

Hanyo's construction is inventive and completely unpredictable - a fascinating case-study on Confucian ethics.

It's so good that Martin Scorsese and other sponsors funded a complete restoration of the old print, which includes painstakingly subtitle tracks. They did an outstanding job restoring a problematic print that was at the same time extremely rare.You should be able to catch a free streaming video that's fully authorized. (http://www.theauteurs.com/films/2039)

Or better yet, the DVD has just been released, and contains additional material about its restoration

Suicides, attempted suicides, blackmail, murder, attempted murder, adultery, paranoia -- the goings-on in this bizarre and fascinating melodrama put even MANJI to shame.

No wonder one critic calls director Kim "Douglas Sirk on acid" -- while Western audiences may laugh at some of the overheated melodrama, this potboiler nonetheless is pretty wild for 1960, and manages to be both lurid and unforgettable. (It's also got one of the great death scenes *ever* -- see for yourself!)

An interesting mix of film noir, melodrama, and morality tale, which also does a good job of keeping the audience off-balance. There may also be some social commentary in here relative to class and making us wonder to what lengths someone will go to preserve their reputation and upward mobility, but I think these were in a minor key, even if the film does bring Parasite to mind. There is something mythical about how this woman manages to invert the whole order of this house, and yet it's also got moments that are intensely dramatic and real, and that was interesting. The threat always seems clear and present to us, because the housemaid (Lee Eun-shim) seems a little off, there are constant trips to the cupboard with rat poison, and the family has a couple of kids. The character actions never quite seem to make sense which worked against it for me, but that's a part of what works the audience up into a frenzy, and keeps it a wild ride.

The acting in the film is unfortunately not one of its highlights, but Lee Eun-shim certainly is striking in the shots of her glaring through the window, and sultry when she's getting intimate with her boss (Kim Jin-kyu). I liked the shot of her bare feet stepping up onto his shoes, followed by the one of his back as her arms circled around him, and in a later scene when her calf sinuously winding around his - they capture the seduction well. Less successful were the cliché, heavy-handed moments, like the lightning hitting a tree after the first infidelity (it made me think of the cliché opening to a novel, It was a dark and stormy night....). The cinematography is pretty nice, though I wish it hadn't been as confined and given a little more freedom.

At its bottom though, this is a conservative film about the importance of family and avoiding the female temptress, which is an age old and tired theme. And even if the man can't manage that, well, his wife should shoulder some blame, and in this case, she does, for having wanted a bigger house (ugh). It was for this reason and for the unevenness in the character motivations that I didn't rate the film higher, but it was certainly entertaining, and definitely had camp appeal.

Quote: "Where are you going?" "Your daddy is going to sleep with me tonight."

"Hanyo" ("The Housemaid") works like a very good piece of classical music: It has a slow beginning that seems to go forever, then it adds some crescendos here and there to makes us alarmed, creating a thrilling suspense and a dramatic situation that leads to a powerful and killer ending. You might applause after all that, both the music and the film because when you see the whole picture you realize what a wonderful and memorable works of art they are.

The housemaid of the title is a dangerous female student who enters in the life of a married piano teacher trying to get love from him, no matter if the teacher's wife and kids will suffer so that they can be together. The teacher is controlled by both housemaid and the wife, and he needs to make a decision fast before things get worse for everyone. Here's a story about the value of family in the middle of betrayals, delusions, obsession, tradition, real love versus psychotic forms of love, and plenty of more keywords you may think.

At times "Fatal Attraction" appeared in my mind since there's a significant similarity between both films, and if the story sounds like cliché it is but you must see how it works and who is working with. We're talking about a Korean film and as some of us know, Asian females in older films didn't have the kind of roles the women had in here, powerful and energetic characters that almost boss around with the only men in the story like he was a puppy dog. And the villain? Oh boy! She was one of the most dramatic and perfectly well written villains of all time. Frightening, desperate to the point of threatening the teacher's kids who gets suspicious of everything she serves to them thinking they might get poisoned, this woman knows how to find a answer to everything in order to ruin people's lives, from false rumors to murder.

Don't be let down by the slowness of the first half hour (the characters introduction), try to stay focused all the time and you'll be totally surprised until the very last minute. This is a great film! 9/10

I bought this film on NTSC-VHS format from an online Korean business called koreapop.com. The copy evidently had been put together from two or three diffrent copies of the film, since some parts of the film looked like they were in better shape than others, and also there were English subtitles in some parts, but not most others. (Note that I bought this film knowing that it would be in Korean, with no subtitles).

This movie features what is probably the first scene in cinematic history where a woman rapes a man- a whole 25 years before Isabella Rosellini raped Kyle McCallahan in "Blue Velvet"! As a Korean movie, it's story challenges traditional Korean propriety. The housemaid character is a castrating hose-beast: Not exactly the kind of Korean woman portrayed in most Korean movies made then or now. Director Kim Kiyoung tends to turn the conventional Korean-movie plotline on its head in this movie, since there is no real "happy-ending", in fact, things just seem to get worse and worse. The only other Korean movie similar to it in this sense, is the recently released "Kilimanjaro" (also an EXCELLENT film). This movie is indeed a Korean-movie classic. It's just too bad that the remaining copies of such classic Korean films are not given the best of care, since many, like this one, are in fairly rough shape. I hope that the Koreans will take more pride in their cinematic history and prepare for better archival storage and restoration of their nation's film legacy.

A classic Korean drama+thriller of 1960s. The film captures audience attention through suspenseful events which makes the plot interesting. The final part of the film is more exciting and twisting.

A 1960 South Korean film not unlike last year's Oscar Best Picture Parasite about the have's & have not's living in the same abode. A pianist, his wife & their 2 children live together happily. The wife is pregnant w/another child on the way so the pianist decides to become a piano teacher at a local factory where all the students are female. One day, at the behest of a pushy friend, one student boldly leaves a note declaring her love for the teacher who is so taken aback he reports her to her supervisor who promptly, as per the company's regs, lets her go. The pushy friend was testing the waters all along (she used her friend as a proxy) since she taking lessons w/the teacher from his home but as the pregnancy wears on, she suggests someone to come over to help (the wife insists they need a maid). The new girl soon settles into the new environment but things turn when she witnesses the student throw herself at the teacher (who he re-approaches) who quickly in turn banishes her from his home. The maid soon steps up to the plate, as it were, & the beginning of the end commences as an unhealthy obsession becomes a relationship marked by threatened doses of poison, unwanted pregnancies & shock zooms making this revered classic not for all tastes since at one point the downstairs soon controls the upstairs & the stoic victimization settles in. The shock ending doesn't help matters much by trying to have the outcome favor all rather than the uncomfortable parable between the privileged & those who serve them which the story-line initially proposed. There is a 2010 film of the same name which I saw the trailer for but whether it's a remake or not remains to be seen, I'll keep you posted.

A film easily as shocking and crazy as Psycho coming out in the same year?! Who knew? A small group of South Korean cult cinema fans, apparently. Odd, petite, and minxy Eun-Shim Lee gets hired by a music professor to help his ailing and pregnant wife, and what is otherwise a somber, well-behaved Korean drama gets hijacked and transformed into alarming and horrifying mess! In between numerous cigarette breaks, bad girl Eun-Shim taunts the children, insults the wife, easily kills and displays a large rat, ogles the rat poison bottle, flirts with the professor, threatens a visiting piano student, and locates the kitchen's sharpest knife. And she's just warming up! Has to be seen to be believed.

It was only in the last two decades that Korean cinema had slowly become a force to be reckoned with. Today, Korean films set the standard for Asian cinema, and are only occasionally bettered by films from Japan, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Some of Korea's top filmmakers, such as Park Chan-wook, Kim Ki-duk, and Bong Joon-ho, to a name a few, are now rubbing shoulders with the great directors of Europe, frequently taking part and winning awards in film festivals like Cannes and Venice. The renaissance (if that is the correct word) of contemporary Korean cinema owes a debt to Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid, one of only a few great films to emerge post-war from the country. The Housemaid is about a happy family who are torn apart by a maid hired by the husband to help with daily chores. The maid seduces the husband and tries to wield control over his materialistic wife who is pregnant. The maid also has tensions with their children – a crippled daughter and a mischievous boy. The Housemaid starts out like an Ozu-esquire drama where life couldn't be more ordinary, with Kim taking his time to flesh out the film's major characters. The first scene immediately foreshadows what is to come later: The husband, who is reading the paper, is aghast at a report of a man who committed adultery with his maid. His wife reacts by replying, "Men are hopeless, taking interest in a maid." Their maid unsurprisingly appears in the second-quarter of the film, bringing an ominous development to the proceedings. The performance by the actress (I can't quite figure out her name) who plays the maid is tremendous, providing Korean cinema with one if its vilest villains. She hides her "sexual predator" self under her shy demeanor, only exposing her true colors when she finds herself alone with her master. Kim also sets up the mood of the film to work out like a "haunted house" picture. Many of the external shots are that of lashing rain and blinding lightning, giving the film a sinister edge. His direction is assured, and slowly but surely, he navigates his film into horror territory. The second hour of The Housemaid is unpredictable. The situation that unfolds border on disturbing material, with Kim exploring the worst of human nature. The climax is frightening not because it is horrific, but because it is tragic. Kim also adds a layer of dark humor into the dialogue, which coupled with some over-the-top acting, helps to make the film less grim. Nevertheless, The Housemaid remains as a stinging social commentary and a powerful tale of lust, greed, and revenge. In the final scene that breaks the "fourth wall', men are mocked for their ease of succumbing to temptations of flesh, like tiger to fresh meat. But really, is it fair to put the blame on one half of the human race? SCORE: 8/10 () All rights reserved!

South Korean director Kim Ki Young's film 'Hanyo'/ The Housemaid is a serious family film which needs to be watched by all members of any family. As this film is absolutely pertinent due to its brutal yet frank treatment of what makes or breaks a family, it is expected that both husbands and wives would make efforts to watch it. Director Kim's film impressed viewers to such an extent that even assistance came in the form of American director Martin Scorcese's World Cinema Foundation. As a film which chose to describe marital relations and their consequences on a married couple, Hanyo is a bold film of its times. One must bear in mind that it was made at a time when revolutionary ideas were in the air. The emotions found in contemporary South Korean films are all reflections of a nation's psyche. From that point of view, it can be said that Hanyo is no exception to the rule. It has its own fair share of controversial elements including neurotic persons. All characters have mean qualities including the couple's two children who are constantly bullying each other. Lastly, no particular group or person is favored as director Kim Ki Young depicted how everybody has reasons to do anything for safeguarding the family's interests.

The original version of the Housemaid is a classic black and white and colder than the remake of 2010; two vastly different styles with basically the same plot line. The director has learned a Hitchcock type of film making and the result is fairly good.

A pianist and composer whose pregnant wife is overwhelmed by their two small children and is exhausted from sewing clothes around the clock, hires a cute young housemaid to help with chores; big mistake. The sexy lass quickly seduces the music man and becomes pregnant with his future bastard child. Wifey finds out and attempts an abortion by accident with the temptress.

More chaos happens to this lovely family, all caused by an evil woman. Check out both the 1960 and the 2010 movie, as they are both good.

This movie was a real surprise. I knew nothing about this director, or 'old' Korean cinema, so I had no idea what to expect from this movie. I was really surprised at how incredibly well and professionally it got directed and the story got written, as if it all got done by some big Hollywood names involved, with years of experience in the business under their belt. Everything about this movie got basically done extremely well. Asian cinema is not often known to feature the fastest pace but this movie has a very pleasant quick pace to it and still manages to build up its characters and drama as powerful and effective as any other old and much slower Asian genre attempt. This is of course for most part due to the directing approach of Ki-young Kim, that is nothing short of brilliant to be honest. There are some amazingly well set up moments in the movie, that get brought beautifully and at times even artistically to the screen. But it's also due to the fine written story, by Ki-young Kim as well, that makes this movie such an extremely good one. It's a quite simple movie, in terms of that it doesn't feature that many characters in it and it is being set for most part at only two different locations; an house and a factory. What I foremost liked about the story was that all of the characters within it interact differently with each other and each of them have a different feeling and opinion about the other. It lets the story and all of its emotions and tension work out so very well. And this is all despite the fact that the movie just doesn't really have the most likely and convincing story in it. Or perhaps this is more due to the fact that's its about an entirely different culture, so all of the character motivations and their actions often seem like odd ones, through modern Western eyes. The movie is being a (melo)drama but with definitely a thriller overtone to it. The movie features some classic, effective genre elements, such as a great sense of claustrophobia, a constant sense of danger and unpredictability to it all, overall desperateness and even a femme fatale. It's also being a very well cast movie. Not only do all of the actors really let their characters work out well but they also all seem to have the right looks for their part. They are also all very distinctive looking, so you never have to worry about mixing one or two different South-Koreans up with each other, like perhaps sometimes is the case in other black & white Asian movies, in which all of the characters look alike with the same costumes and hairstyles. One surprisingly great movie, that got beautifully and fully restored by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation. 9/10