The Housemaid

“The Citizen Kane of Korean cinema” - This is what Bong Joon-Ho, now famous for Parasite, had to say for the movie. Kim KI-Young who is the founder of Korean Cinema. Made in 19 60, the movie was restored in 2008 by the Korean Film Archive. 

It’s a fascinating movie which has many parallel themes running in the movie. This is what MUBI has to say:

Gut-wrenching yet spellbinding, The Housemaid eludes any genre. Kim cuts abruptly from the preamble—a husband and wife musing on the nature of infidelity—to the main plot, in which two young factory workers fall for their music-club teacher. When one of them is suspended after passing him a flirtatious note, the other infiltrates his household pretending to want piano lessons, and then hires yet another wayward colleague as the family’s housekeeper.

What follows is a torrid tale of forbidden love, sexual aggression, blackmail, and, ultimately, murder. Ki-young handles this contorted plot with such assured brazenness—mixing social critique with elements of horror and grotesque—that it’s hard not see The Handmaid as a model for all Korean horror made since. Last to last years Palme d’Or winner, Parasite, by Bong Joon-ho, for example, bears great affinity with it. Both films portray a hard-working family whose frustrated economic ambitions turn the whole world upside down. To an extent, Bong’s film is a playful pastiche on the classic story of the unsuspecting family exploited by a social “parasite.”

Kim ironizes South Korea’s consumerism with blunt, at times outrageous wit, as Bong does. And like Bong’s prize-winner, Kim’s masterpiece evinces moral ambivalence: a fallen husband too eager to purge his guilt, a wife whose self-abnegation makes her—depending on how you see her—a martyr or a despot. Kim Deok-jin’s cinematography creates a claustrophobic universe full of spying and of hidden threats.

It gave me goosebumps and reminded me of Hitchcock and his movies. Older movies when VFX was not there and especially the B/W ones a lot depended on dialogue delivery, emotions portrayed by the actors and the overall cinematography of how the screen shapes in front of you. The shadows especially tell its own story. The quarters are cramped and to shoot in that place with cameras and people around must be a big challenge or maybe it was easier - because it’s almost like a theatre. 

In my life too maids were our safety net, we were lucky to have maids who were like an extended family and took care of both my daughters. We helped them economically and my wife would patiently hear their painful stories of husband getting drunk, taking money from her, beating her & children etc. This was 10 years back when mobile was still a luxury for them. But now things are different maids have as younger ones are more ambitious and want to fight for their rights and their place in society. Which is what Kim shows in 1960’s Korea is the new reality of India.

The transgressions shown in this movie are more heard in Mumbai where the rich and famous fall, at least 2 cases are well documented. Hope there are not more. 

Postscript: 

About Kim Ki-Young: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ki-young