Director: Sang-soo Im
Writers: Ki-young Kim (based on the film by), Sang-soo Im
Stars: Do-yeon Jeon, Jung-jae Lee, Yuh-jung Youn
The Housemaid (Korean: 하녀; RR: Hanyeo) is a 2010 South Korean melodramatic erotic thriller film directed by Im Sang-soo. The story focuses on Eun-yi, played by Jeon Do-yeon, who becomes involved in a destructive love triangle while working as a housemaid for an upper-class family.
Ominous.
Following the screening in Cannes, Maggie Lee of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "a flamingly sexy soap opera whose satire on high society is sometimes as savage as Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie". However, Lee also found the film to have several prominent flaws: "plot developments are glaringly melodramatic" and "even with Jeon's calibrated performance, Eun‑yi's characterization is problematic...[T]he absence in motivation of her behaviour does not really convince". Lee Hyo-won of The Korea Times was all praises, saying that Im "brings a sexy, seamlessly quilted film that throbs with intrigue, lively characters and finely crafted melodrama". In 2014, it made Time's list of "Top 12 Female Revenge Movies" along with another South Korean film Lady Vengeance; with the review "the grim, gleaming Housemaid has a silky thread of tension tightening around the viewer’s rooting interest, right up to the cutting revenge Eun-yi takes on her torturers."
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 70% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 70 reviews, with an average rating of 6.74/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".