Rijndri
Load of rubbish!!
Janae Milner
Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Quiet Muffin
This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
Nicole
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
calvinnme
... 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".
Claudio Carvalho
In the 60's in Korea, the piano teacher Mr. Kim works in a factory giving music classes to the workers. When he receives a love letter from the student Miss Kwak, he delivers the letter to the supervisor and the worker is suspended for three days.Mr. Kim is a family man, married with two children, the girl Aw-Soon and the boy Chang-Soon, and he has just built and moved to a bigger house of his own. His wife Mrs. Kim also works too much at a sewing machine and they need a housemaid to help her in the housework. Mr. Kim asks Kwak's best friend, Miss Kyung Hee Cho, who is his private student of piano, to help him to find a housemaid. Miss Cho invites an unstable and unbalanced young woman to work for Mr. and Mrs. Kim and she introduces the housemaid to the family. Mr. Kim hires the youth and brings her to the household. But soon she behaves in a strange way, snooping Mr. Kim's private classes until the night that she seduces Mr. Kim and they have intercourse. The housemaid gets pregnant and uses her condition to press Mr. Kim. When she provokes a miscarriage, she blackmails Mr. Kim leading to the family's destruction. "Hanyo" is a masterpiece of obsession in a weird culture, i.e., in a culture absolutely different from the westerns. The melodramatic story is absolutely unpredictable, has wonderful performances, but I can not even imagine a western being submitted by the outrageous situation that Mr. Kim and his family have to live due to the blackmail of their housemaid. The devotion to family is part of the Confucianism but after the death of the boy, it is inadmissible even to think a family man allowing the killer to stay in the household and to have sex with her. The conclusion is totally unexpected and it is funny to hear that this sort of thing may happen to any man. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Hanyo, A Empregada" ("Hanyo, the Housemaid")
Eternality
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!
kam-wing pang
When I first watched this I thought 'what is this film'? I mean, all the characters are over the top, the emotions were so unreal, the situations so stupid (and often hilarious when it was intended to be to serious) that I didn't know what to feel. I was in serious doubt that this film could have been a Korean classic! Then the last 5 minutes changed everything you felt about the film and it all made sense! The film is indeed a classic and worth watching!It's about a man and how one mistake in his life caused so much death and sadness in his family. It goes through various surreal situations which made me laugh. There seemed to be some frustration that I felt since the actors were like in a comic book yet portrayed a serious topic which shouldn't have been funny at all, yet you laugh anyway...
