The Housemaid (Hanyo) [Sub: Eng]
Eun-yi is an innocent young woman who is hired as an upper class family housemaid, and is tasked to take care of the family's small daughter and her pregnant mother, Hae-ra. Byung-sik is an older housemaid who has been with this family for a long time and holds many secrets. But soon enough, the master of the house, Hoon, takes advantage of his social position by slipping into the new housemaid's bed. Hoon's visits become frequent and Byung-sik reports the affair to Hae-ra's mother Mi-hee, who plots to give Hae-ra the control over her husband. Soon Eun-yi becomes pregnant by Hoon and wants to keep the baby. This is discovered by the family and Eun-yi is forced by Mi-hee to have an abortion despite the young woman's pleas to let her keep the baby and leave the house. Her forced abortion turns Eun-yi's already fragile mental condition for the worse and she decides to take the matter into her own hands...
2 July 1974, South Korea
7 July 1985, South Korea
23 May 1969
15 March 1973, Seoul, South Korea
16 May 1983, South Korea
19 June 1947, South Korea
12 January 2004, Suwon, South Korea
11 February 1973, Seoul, South Korea
May 15, 2011
...an echo of the 1960 film perhaps, but it's an echo that has been compressed and processed, run through the stomp box that is director Im Sang-soo's imagination.April 17, 2011
Exudes a surreal sense of deranged domestic privilege.April 11, 2011
Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid either doesn't know what it wants to be, or is trying to be too many things at once. Few films can claim to be over-ambitious and half-hearted at the same time, but there you go.October 25, 2011
Quick to show its characters' skin but less inclined to explore what lies beneath it.March 04, 2011
The movie kowtows to the old truism that the rich are different - but it does it with a sardonic smile.October 04, 2017
While it effectively sticks the knife into upper-class mores, it certainly has a been-there, done-that feel to it that the former does not.February 25, 2011
Writer-director Im Sang-Soo injects a certain sense of otherworldliness in the proceedings -- the final scene is straight from David Lynchland --- which may not make things mesmerizing, but does deliver a consistently odd angle.December 13, 2011
The situation continues to fester, the balance of power shifts back and forth among some wonderfully defined characters.July 14, 2011
With the honourable exception of a film-saving Byung-sik, the characters are too unpleasant and two-dimensional to keep it together.March 18, 2011
The graphic sex scenes radiate an uncommon heat, and Im can pull off a hugely effective shock when he wants to.February 17, 2011
"The Housemaid" scores on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin.April 12, 2016
Im Sang-soo can't improve on Kim Ki-young's 1960 original, a jaIm Sang-soo can't improve on Kim Ki-young's 1960 original, a jarring and operatic cult favorite. Still, he does tweak the themes in intriguing fashion.