The Housemaid is a Korean classic by filmmaker Ki-young Kim. It played during the IFFR 2009 because it had recently been restored by a restoration foundation where Scorsese is in charge. It is said to be one of his all-time favourite films, which probably explains the big audience during the screening.
The protagonist lives a normal life with his family as a music teacher. One day his wife gets sick and they decide to take in a housemaid. The man asks one of his music students to get him one, which she does. But the housemaid has plans of her own, which is also true for the protagonist's wife. The women's plans turn the man into a victim, and all the women of the film want him for themselves. The women's egoism leads to tragedy after tragedy.
With the psychology of a Nicholas Ray film, and the melodrama of a Douglas Sirk picture, the acting is so over the top that the audience doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.Especially at the Shakespearean climax of the film the whole theatre often bursts into laughter. This is melodrama at its very best.
Many people now would consider the acting in the Housemaid bad because it's so ''unrealistic''. But realism in acting is purely subjective, it being based on culture and time. What is realistic in the west may be unrealistic in the east, and the other way around. But the strong melodramatic acting by the leads in the Housemaid is not the only strong part of the film. Kim keeps building up suspense and twists, where it's almost impossible to guess what will happen next. This is especially true for the ending, where the protagonist does something so unexpected, that no on in the audience could have foreseen. It immediately leads to a big applause for the Korean 1960 masterpiece, a movie that anyone who cares for cinema should see.
*****(out of 5)
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