Kim Ki-young’s landmark 1960 film The Housemaid (하녀, Hanyeo) was a gothic tale positioning the source of its horror in the temptations of an increasingly consumerist society as a moderately wealthy man acquires the means to hire a domestic servant only to give in to sexual temptation which brings about his ruin. Kim’s moralising drama may cast a young woman as a salacious femme fatale, but it also ends with a perhaps surprising coda that reminds the male members of the audience that rules exist for them too and they can’t expect to escape unscathed should they break them.
Im Sang-soo’s 2010 “remake”, perhaps more accurately described as a re-imagining, updates the tale for the modern day in which a class of super elites has become almost entirely detached from regular society and with it any sense of conventional morality. The heroine, Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yeon), is not a naive schoolgirl but a mature woman once divorced, while the head of the household, Hoon (Lee Jung-jae), is in fact absent for most of the picture which otherwise features only women engaged in accidental class warfare and desperate, internecine fights for survival.
Im opens, however, with a tense and prophetic scene roving around the night market where Eun-yi is temporarily working alongside a friend while waiting for another opportunity. A young woman hovers over a rooftop railing, eventually falling to her death. Eun-yi is oddly fascinated, asking her friend to come with her to check out the scene on their way home. This odd reaction may fit with later characterisations of her as “childlike”, though otherwise in conflict with constant reminders that Eun-yi is a “good person” despite the potential for corruption offered by the Goh mansion. While Mrs Goh, Hae-ra (Seo Woo), is heavily pregnant with twins and unable to satisfy her husband sexually, he turns to the maid who is much older than she is but also more experienced, earthier, and freer in spirit. Eun-yi is a willing participant in their affair, but is surprised when Hoon leaves her a cheque the next morning as if he were paying her an overtime bonus or merely trying to justify his sexual transgression as a transaction sealed off from his family life.
Nevertheless, the situation reaches a crisis point when veteran housekeeper Mrs Cho (Youn Yuh-jung ) discovers the affair and suspects that Eun-yi may be pregnant. While as Hae-ra’s mother Mi-hee (Park Ji-young) puts it, affairs are part of the package with a rich husband, a child is an existential threat yet for all her plotting Mi-hee may be overplaying her hand pushing Eun-yi from a second floor ladder in full view of her daughter and granddaughter hoping to engineer if not a death then at least a miscarriage. Victims of this same system of class and patriarchy, Hae-ra and her mother believe they must destroy another woman to ensure they hang on to their position which they only occupy in their relationship to Hoon.
Mrs Cho, meanwhile, once felt something similar, in essence a turncoat believing that her only possibility lies in toadying for the super rich but now that her son has been made a prosecutor she’s beginning to tire of a life of constant degradation. “R.U.N.S.” is her favourite acronym for describing her existence, “Revolting, ugly, nauseating, and shameless”. Fearing for her safety, she advises Eun-yi not to linger too long in the house, but is finally forced to admit that she feels ashamed in her complicity with the shady machinations of her employers whom she describes as “scary people” willing to act with absolute impunity when it comes to protecting their wealth and position. “Why’d you just stand still and let her slap you like that?” she asks of Eun-yi confronted by the jealous wife, indigent on her behalf but also unable to deny that it’s an apt metaphor for the way she has lived her life trapped in the house of Goh.
As for the house itself, its fierce modernity makes for a cold home along with its sense of spotless sterility in which everything, and everyone, must have a place. The only source of heat provided is by a raging fire in front of which Hae-ra and her mother plot their “revenge” behind the back of an otherwise emasculated Hoon who is later forced to confront the reality that he is largely without power in this matriarchal household. Im’s camera tilts at these destabilising moments, a degree of unease lurking in the house’s shadowy interiors. Eun-yi wanders around in her white nighty like a living ghost now defined by her complicated status straddling a class divide. Yet she really is a “good person” with a “pure heart”, her desire for revenge largely turning inward but also doomed to fail in that you cannot shame the shameless into recognising their own immorality. Eun-yi never considers digging in and taking over the house herself, while her opposing numbers operate under a misplaced terror of her potential to unseat them. Their ongoing oppression is both modus vivendi and ingrained defence mechanism.
Yet they are all victims of the same systems of entrenched class privilege and patriarchy that set one person against another driven by fear and desperation. Only Mrs Cho finally has the courage to reject the system altogether by removing herself from it, no longer willing to be complicit with her own degradation. “That’s what these people are like,” Hoon sneers, almost offended but perhaps shaken by Mrs Cho’s quiet revolution in realising he holds no power over those who’ve decided to be free.
International trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 