The Housemaid (2010)

A beautifully directed movie about a super-rich family who unsurprisingly put their own needs first, right to the point of trying to kill the pregnant housemaid and then forcing an abortion on her. She is driven crazy by their monetary hypocrisy, offering her huge cheques at every point, including right after sex with her boss. After she is poisoned and her baby is done away with she can't take it any longer and dramatically commits suicide in front of them all at the end, even in front of the little girl she loves and who loved her. The viewer is left breathless after this powerful drama and its lethal climax. Strongly recommended: franker than any drama Hollywood could produce on a good day.

You'd better watch the original movie, 'The Housemaid' directed by Ki-Young Kim in 1960, which is one of the first and finest Korean movie I've seen so far. Compared to the original version, The Housemaid (2010) is really deceiving.The first hour is OK, but then it gets really boring, even though the acting isn't that bad. It's just a pity that such good actors' talent was wasted (see Do-Yeon Jeon in 'Sunshine (2007)' and Jung-Jae Lee in 'New World (2013)').Not to mention the ending, which reminded me Brian De Palma's 'The Fury', deceiving too.

The Housemaid tells an erotic tale of seduction, affair and scheming people all out to get their own way. Do-yeon Jeon plays Eun-Yi Li who is hired as a maid for an extravagant rich family - the wife is currently pregnant with two twin boys, they already have a little daughter and the husband is a very business businessman but just so happens to have time to fool with many women (supposedly) and one of them...surprise! just happens to be Eun-Yi.The storyline is pretty typical and you can see where things will go so it didn't come as a surprise to me at all. What the film touches on is the schemes of the high class society in terms of their lifestyle and thinking that money can usually solve their problems. It also touches on the fact that the upper class often have not a lot of time on their hands - but not much really to do with it to entertain themselves.The flaw of this film is that the main character of Eun-Yi - I didn't particularly sympathise with her. I guess it is because I found her decisions a bit stupid and you didn't really know much about her besides the fact that she was of lower class and really likes kids. In fact, I sort of didn't really hate the wife of the husband as she was actually quite decent to Eun-Yi, though you obviously can see that she is a victim in terms of her husband's infidelities.One character that stood out for me was Miss Cho - who is the head housemaid in the mansion. You first see her as a very strict, no nonsense type of woman but during the film you see how she also is highly observant (typical butler/maid nosiness) and also has her fair share of mixed feelings towards the inhabitants of the house.Now for the ending - won't spoil anything here. I can see why some people feel that the ending doesn't really do the film justice - I agreed at first but the more you think about it - the more the message is there. The ending I think really gets its message in the fact that the upper class can easily forget things and get on with their repetitive lives thinking they are on top and their materialism will drown out all bad memories or problems. The ending certainly won't work for some and while I feel more could have been put into it, it certainly does leave an impression the more you think about it.The film is not perfect - a lot of decisions Eun-Yi makes didn't really make me feel empathetic due to the fact that I think she isn't a highly likable character nor a partcularly interesting one - they are sort of card board cut outs in my opinion.Overall however, this is simply a film about a love affair and the consequences of it - I don't blame you if you watch this and you feel like 'this is something I've seen before too many times'.

A South Korean soap opera, The Housemaid is a combination of Fatal Attraction, In the Mood for Love, and myriad other adultery thrillers. Its sensual sheen and quiet sexuality underpin a grim war between servants and the ruling class with no one winning.Adapted from an earlier Korean version by director Sang-soo Im, it tells of naïve Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yuon) being hired as a maid in a wealthy household, whose head, Hoon (Jung-Jae-Lee), takes her as a love interest while his pregnant wife comes to term and the other ladies gradually find out that Eun-yi is pregnant as well. While the house is meticulously modern and opulent, an undercurrent of evil runs through it as if it were a Poe tale.Although at times Housemaid moves slowly, especially in the mid section, no audience could be indifferent to the haughty treatment of the servants by the rich, who treat them as you might think Thomas Jefferson treated his own slaves, with decorum but decidedly selfish and cruel. Eun-yi is not totally innocent, for she enjoys the master's attention, and Hoon can be partially forgiven because of the harpies like his wife and mother-in-law, who treat him like a child, or in the case of his wife, ignore his sexual needs except to create children. That he plays a mean classical piano and drinks wine like an aristocrat used to the fineness of wealth, Hoon is partially an animal of the lowest order, giving in to his appetites protected by his wealth and his ladies.The final moments are the payoff as most everyone in not spared humiliation or violence. Although the connection between the opening and closing is a bit too much of a figurative and literal connection, The Housemaid holds up admirably as Gothic horror in a modern Asian setting replaying the themes of class conflict and revenge.