Taglines: Sometimes innocence becomes a menace.
Eun-yi is hired as an au pair for Hae Ra (pregnant with twins) and her rich husband Hoon. Eun-yi’s primary task is watching the couple’s young daughter, Nami. Eun-yi is eager to connect to Nami, who gradually warms to her.
Hoon begins to secretly flirt with Eun-yi, enticing her with glasses of wine and his piano playing, and they eventually begin a sexual relationship. Despite the affair, Eun-yi is still warm and friendly to Hoon’s oblivious wife, Hae Ra; she even expresses enthusiasm and delight at the progress of Hae Ra’s pregnancy.
Byeong-sik, aka “Miss Cho” (the other live-in maid, originally Hae Ra’s childhood maid) witnesses Eun-yi and Hoon having sex. She tries to subtly pry details from Eun-yi, but Eun-yi brushes her off casually. Later, Miss Cho reveals her suspicion that Eun-yi is pregnant to Hae Ra’s mother. Hae Ra’s mother then visits the family and stages an “accident,” resulting in Eun-yi falling from a ladder positioned at the top of a set of stairs.
Dangling from a chandelier, Eun-yi begs Hae Ra’s mother to pull her over the railing. Hae Ra’s mother doesn’t oblige, and Eun-yi falls. Suffering only a concussion, Eun-yi spends the night in the hospital. During her stay, she learns that she is pregnant and contemplates abortion. Meanwhile, the secret affair is revealed to Hae Ra.
Hae Ra’s mother, Mi-hee, instructs Hae Ra to ignore the affair; she insists that all wealthy husbands will eventually cheat, but that if Hae Ra ignores it she can “live like a queen.” Later that night, Hae Ra stands over Eun-yi’s bed with a golf club but is unable to strike the sleeping woman. The next day, Hae Ra and her mother confront Eun-yi, offering her $100,000 to have an abortion and leave.
Hae Ra knows that Eun-yi wouldn’t abort her child “for all the money in the world,” so she takes matters into her own hands by poisoning the herbal medicine packets Eun-yi drinks everyday. Hae Ra goes to the hospital and delivers her twin sons. Hoon visits the hospital, where Hae Ra makes her ill-will towards him known. Furious, he returns home alone and finds Eun-yi in his bathtub. She reveals that she is pregnant and plans on keeping the baby.
Eun-yi succumbs to the effects of the poison, and Mi-hee arranges an abortion without Eun-yi’s consent. After the abortion, Miss Cho reveals that she told Mi-hee about Eun-yi’s pregnancy. Eun-yi is angry, but forgives Miss Cho and vows to get revenge on the family. After recovering from her abortion, Eun-yi sneaks into the house with Miss Cho’s assistance.
Hoon finds her breastfeeding one of the newborn babies. Hae Ra insists that Miss Cho chase Eun-yi out of the house, but Miss Cho refuses and quits her job on the spot. Eun-yi then confronts the entire family (Hae Ra, Mi-hee, Hoon, and Nami), hanging herself from the same chandelier she once clung to, then lighting her body on fire as the family watches in horror.
A first screenplay for the film was written by Kim Soo-hyun, but after director Im Sang-soo had edited the script so heavily that Kim considered it to be entirely Im’s own work, she decided to leave the project and publicly expressed her dissatisfaction. Although the film includes some key elements of the original, Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid from 1960, Im has said that he tried to never think of it during the production in order to come up with a modern and original work.
One major difference between the versions is that the original film took place in the middle class, while the remake is set in an extreme upper-class environment. Im explains this with South Korea’s social structure around 1960, which was a time when the country’s middle class started to form and many poor people moved from the countryside to work in the cities: “women became housemaids who served not only for the rich but also the middle class and that issue had served as the basis to Kim Ki-young’s work.
What I realized upon reworking The Housemaid in 50 years was that there are much more wealthy people now, people who are millionaires… I wanted to depict the reality in which housewives from normal families have to undertake hard work too” The film was produced by the Seoul-based company Mirovision.
The Housemaid
Directed by: Sang-soo Im
Starring: Do-yeon Jeon, Jung-Jae Lee, Seo-Hyeon Ahn, Woo Seo, Yeo-Jong Yun, So-ri Moon
Screenplay by: Sang-soo Im, Ki-young Kim
Production Design by: Ha-jun Lee
Cinematography by: Hyung-deok Lee
Film Editing by: Eun Soo Lee
Costume Design by: Jin-a Lee
Set Decoration by: Hyeon-mi Yang
Art Direction by: Jung-yoon Bae
Music by: Hong-jip Kim
MPAA Rating: None.
Studio: IFC Films
Release Date: January 21, 2011
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