THE HOUSEMAID (HANYEO) World Cinema

Kim Ki-young’s claustrophobic setting of a narrow two-story home is the perfect cage in which to attempt to contain the wild and escalating emotions of this domestic melodrama The film tells the story of Mr. Kim, a music teacher whose guilt over the suspension of a young woman he teaches leads him to question his judgment and test the limits of propriety with his new housemaid His wife, Mrs. Kim, works two jobs so that they can afford their new dwelling, but her dream of perfect domesticity unravels quickly when her husband surrenders to the housemaid’s advances, an act that puts everyone in the house, including the children, on a path of mounting cruelty and obsession. A spectacular close-up shot of dying rats writhing in a bowl of white rice laced with poison becomes an unforgettable symbol of the nightmarish world evoked in this classic of Korean noir cinema.