Cinema
The Housemaid
하녀
Kim Ki-young · 1960
Synopsis
Dong-sik, a composer, teaches music to the women workers of a factory, while his wife sews without respite to pay for the large new two-storey house the family has just moved into. To relieve his exhausted wife, he hires a young maid recommended by one of his piano pupils. The newcomer's ambiguous conduct soon unsettles the house, and when she becomes Dong-sik's mistress, she gradually gains the upper hand over the whole family.
Context
The film was released on 3 November 1960, with Lee Eun-shim in the role of the maid and Ju Jeung-ryu in that of the wife, during a short period when censorship had relaxed. It is seen as its director's break with the realism then dominant. Two reels, long believed lost, reappeared in 1997 in a poor copy with English subtitles burned in; the Korean Film Archive restored the whole with the World Cinema Project, and the version was presented at Cannes in 2008. Its director returned to the subject in 1971 and in 1982, and Im Sang-soo made a new version of it.
Who it is for
A black-and-white film of one hundred and ten minutes, unsettling and cruel; available in France on restored DVD and Blu-ray.
Prizes and reception
Counted among the greatest Korean films; Im Sang-soo, Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho claim its director as an influence.