Written and directed by Kim Ki-young
South Korea, 1960
In 2013, the Criterion Collection released a Blu-Ray/DVD box set called ‘Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project’, featuring six films from other countries, either dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, which have been digitally restored by the efforts of Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation. It should come as no surprise that Scorsese is a cineaste at heart and his love for foreign films, particularly those that have dropped in obscurity, shines thru these presentations. However, like with films that are re-discovered and/or re-evaluated, occasionally you’ll find some that live up to their reputation or not. For my money, the best film in the set is the 1964 Turkish melodrama Dry Summer (1964; Turkish title: Susuz Yaz), which I have already reviewed and sang praises for. The other films in the set include The Journey of the Hyena (1973; Wolof title: Touki Bouki), The Wave (1936; Spanish title: Redes), A River Called Titas (1973; Bengali title: Titash Ekti Nadir Naam), and Trances (1981), all four of which are pretty disposable productions. However, another film in the set is The Housemaid (South Korean title: Hanyo), a very unusual and vastly overrated melodrama-thriller from director Kim Ki-young.
During the late 1950s and the majority of the 1960s when the early South Korean film industry was flourishing, Kim Ki-young became a well-established filmmaker in his homeland through his various films, being placed as an ‘auteur’ with fellow contemporaries like Lee Man-hee and Shin Sang-ok. However, his career stifled a bit in the 1970s and 1980s, eventually being shuffled aside as a forgotten director. Ki-young’s existing works would later be re-discovered by the modern era Korean filmmakers, praising him as a one-of-a-kind filmmaker with a distinctive personal style. Despite a few of Ki-young’s films having survived and rescued by the efforts of the Korean Film Archive (KOFA), The Housemaid has been cherished as not only being Kim Ki-young’s masterpiece but also coined the best film ever made during the Golden Era of 1960s South Korean cinema. Ki-young himself was apparently very fond of his original story for The Housemaid that he would re-make it twice: Woman of Fire (1971; Hwa-nyeo) and Woman of Fire ’82 (1982; Hwa-neyo ’82). Ki-young was not the only one to helm a remake; Im Sang-soo would embark on updating Ki-young’s material for his own version of The Housemaid in 2010.
The Housemaid begins at a local factory in which piano teacher Kim Dong-shik (Kim Jin-kyu) conducts musical lessons for the female workers. Factory worker Kwak Seon-young (Ok Gyeon-hee) writes a letter to Dong-shik expressing her love for him; with the help of fellow co-worker Cho Kyung-hee (Um Aeng-ran), the two put the letter in Dong-shik’s piano for him. Dong-shik finds the letter and reports it to the dormitory dean; Seon-young is suspended three-days for her actions, yet she quits in protest over expressing her love for Dong-shik. Afterwards, Kyung-hee decides to take private piano lessons from Dong-shik and she meets his family: tried but hard working wife Jeong-shim (Ju Jeung-nyeo), their young son Chang-soon (Ahn Seong-gi) and daughter Ae-soon (Lee Yu-ri). While Kyung-hee is taking lessons, Dong-shik asks if she knows anybody who would be willing to work for him as a housemaid. Kyung-hee recruits Myeong-sook (Lee Eun-shim), a reliable yet very strange girl, to serve as the family housemaid. Some time passes and, during a musical lesson at the factory, Dong-shik and Kyung-hee are informed that Seon-young has died and the two attend the funeral. When Dong-shik arrives home, Kyung-hee reveals that she was the one who really loved him and Dong-shik throws her out of the house. Stricken by grief, Myeong-sook uses this opportunity to seduce Dong-shik and he sleeps with her. Tensions rise as Myeong-sook reveals to the husband that she is pregnant with his baby, resulting in Dong-shik to confess the incident to Jeong-shim. In order to protect and sustain their marriage, Dong-shik’s wife convinces Myeong-sook to throw herself down the stairs in order to abort the baby. Struggling with the loss of her baby, Myeong-sook begins to psychologically affect the family and tear them apart in a cat-and-mouse game that could only end in disaster for all those involved.
So, with all the critical praise held for Kim Ki-young, how does The Housemaid hold up? Putting aside the film as being one of the most overrated foreign films ever mentioned by international critics, The Housemaid is a fairly decent dramatic-thriller that presents a rather harrowing story of a middle-class family unit being pushed on the verge of collapse. Indeed, Kim Ki-young concocts a vicious scenario to tell, with Ki-young’s direction being engaging enough in the first and middle-half of the film to hold your interest. And yet, while Ki-young’s direct visual style helps make some elements of the story work, credit should also go to main performers Kim Jin-kyu and Ju Jeung-nyeo as the married couple whose lives teeter towards destruction due to the innocent-turned-dominating housemaid, as well as the couple’s own selfish interests. Lee Eun-shim also delivers a compelling performance as the housemaid: first presented as a somewhat ditzy and confused girl, she slowly reveals herself as a very complex and multi-layered antagonist as she brings misery to everyone in Dong-shik’s family. Ki-young also relies on the effectively blaring jazz-like score by Han Sang-gi, which helps convey the dread in the middle-half of the film. If any, The Housemaid is a near-success of dramatic storytelling with an extremely mean-spirited slant towards its characters and subject matter.
But, keep in mind I said the film is a “near-success”. For all the critics to label The Housemaid as the best film to emerge from 1960s South Korean cinema is very much debatable. No doubt The Housemaid is a good film and contains some unique qualities, but it’s not the best representation of early South Korean cinema and it certainly isn’t a great film. While perhaps not 100% intentional on Ki-young’s part, The Housemaid feels like it’s trying to lean towards Alfred Hitchcock suspense-thriller territory as the film has been slightly compared to that of Hitchcock’s mystery-thrillers of the 1940s and 1950s (a scene in which Myeong-sook is bringing a glass of water possibly containing rat poison to Dong-shik’s son is similar in nature to that of Hitchcock’s early 1941 film Suspicion in which Cary Grant is bringing a glass of “poisoned milk” to Joan Fontaine). But, Ki-young is certainly no Hitchcock in the long run when it comes to mastering suspense or thrills; at least Hitchcock had the ability to pace his suspenseful story-lines efficiently and maintain focus, whereas Ki-young relies heavily on the overuse of characters trapped in personal conflict and pent-up grief to the point it becomes stale and repetitive. Ki-young’s script is far from perfect as he pushes the majority of the suspense elements in the final half of the film, stretching everything out with until it feels like needless padding, and the main finale just drags and drags until one is forced to squirm in their seat with anticipation that Ki-young will get to the point so the viewer can call it a day. Another aspect of Ki-young’s script is the rather confusing sub-plot between Dong-shik and factory worker Kyung-hee: in the film’s opening, it’s Kyung-hee’s friend Seon-young who is responsible for writing the love letter to Dong-shik; after Seon-young’s death, Kyung-hee reveals that she pushed her friend to write the letter and that it’s she who is really in love with Dong-shik. It’s a surprise plotting device that really doesn’t work out too well for the story; if indeed Kyung-hee was responsible for the whole issue with the letter, we are never given any indication of any manipulation or coercion from Kyung-hee’s part and it comes off as a lazily conceived plot point to get viewers attention. And, the big disappointment in The Housemaid is the cop-out ending: while it’s likely the ending was done to appease the Korean censors of the time, Ki-young sadly opted to drop a harrowing conclusion and substitute it with a soft finale which feels like an afterthought, as well as being a huge slap in the face to the audience!
With all this said, The Housemaid isn’t the be-all and end-all of classic South Korean cinema, no matter how much praise the film receives in international circles. But, even though Kim Ki-young’s film isn’t the cat’s meow that it’s been made out to be, I would say The Housemaid is an average film at best that is worth a glance and, so long as you keep your expectations grounded, you’ll walk away seeing something different.
– Christopher William Koenig