The Housemaid (Saturday, January 22, 2011) (3)

The Housemaid is a weird movie. I have come to expect from contemporary Korean films that the directors sometimes like to shock and surprise us, but this movie takes that idea and really runs with it. At times I felt like writer-director Im Sang-Soo was telling an interesting psycho-sexual drama and at time it felt like he was poking fun at us for thinking it was serious, while he made a silly drama similar to a soft-core porno you'd see on late night cable. This isn't to suggest the film is pornographic, but the dramatic plot line was silly and forced throughout.

Hoon and his wife Haera are super rich and have a gigantic house. They have one old housekeeper, Nami, and are looking to hire an assistant for her to help with things around the house. They find Eun-yi, a young woman, and hire her to help out taking care of their young daughter and do smaller tasks like taking food and wine to different parts of the home (because when you're rich you hire people to do that for you). In a short time Eun-yi and Hoon are having an affair. Nami, never happy with her young assistant, finds out about the affair and tries to let Haera know about it in the most dignified way possible. All hell breaks lose when Eun-yi gets pregnant and Nami and Haera's plans crumble as Korean family pride (and blackmail) becomes more important than anything else.

One thing that Sang-Soo does very well here is that he creates a beautiful world of unparalleled luxury with gigantic spaces (in the enormous home) decorated in the finest woods and marbles. The interiors are sumptuous and the costumes work with them beautifully. At times I was reminded of the richness of the rooms and spaces in Luca Guadagnino's recent I Am Love. At time same time, though, there is a coldness and antiseptic quality to the cleanness of everything - which, of course is important here as we realize this rich family is much more superficial, fragile and even toxic than we had originally thought.

There has been a recent trend in the past few years of movies about maids (well, maybe it even goes back to Mary Poppins) and how powerful and manipulative a force they can be. They are like domineering mothers, but are not part of the family and are paid to be there, or not be there. They know all that goes on in their houses, generally don't meddle with the family business, but can find out important information by simply doing their normal job. In many ways Nami is reminiscent of Catalina Saavedra's maid character in Sebastian Silva's The Maid. She wants to be part of the family and thinks of herself as such, she's reluctant to admit she needs help and is such a master of the home that she knows how to control people who step foot in it.

This film is about how maids have become Freudian nightmares. They are motherly and caring (assuming you pay them), but also can be sexual or sexually threatening. They are uber-mothers - not part of the family (and you can have sex with them if you want), but are hard to get rid of if you don't like them.

The finale of this film goes much too far and involves flames and high-wire hijinks (almost literally). It is a shame this happens as there is a lot of interesting stuff to go through in the film about male-female relationships and the cost of companionship and love. Sang-soo goes for a rather big, cheap spectacle at the end (and throughout, really) and undermines the good stuff that we saw before. This is a shame because this could have been a very interesting and beautiful film otherwise.

Stars: 2.5 of 4