[movie 2010] The Housemaid 하녀

[melusine]

via Sportsseoul, Sportsseoul, Sportsseoul

[melusine]

CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 14: Producer Jason Chae, actor Lee Jung-Jae, actress Yoon Yeo-Jung, writer/director Im Sang-Soo and actress Jeon Do-Yeon attend the 'The Housemaid' Photocall at the Palais des Festivals during the 63rd Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2010 in Cannes, France.

credit: Getty Images, Zimbio, Zimbio, BroadwayWorld

<clickable thumbnails>

No hotlinking pls!

[melusine]

^thanks Adeline*

via Sportsseoul, Sportsseoul, Sportsseoul

[melusine]

http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/theDailyArticle/57451.html

The Housemaid by Im Sang-soo in Competition

For his first feature film in Competition, South Korean director Im Sang-soo will present The Housemaid, a remake of the film Hanyo, presented in Cannes Classics in 2008. The forty-sixth Korean film shown on the screens of the Festival since it was inaugurated in 1946, The Housemaid will be screened today at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, at 11:45 am and 10:30 pm.

Among the nineteen films in Competition, two are from South Korea: Poetry, by Lee Changdong, which will be screened tomorrow, and The Housemaid. The story is about the extra-marital relationship a rich man has with his housemaid. Played by Jeon Do-yeon, who won the best actress prize in Cannes in 2007, this mysterious housekeeper will radically change life in this house. According to Im Sang-soo, the film is based on suspense that keeps you on the edge: "Four people go into a room to play poker. Suddenly, a bomb explodes and none of the people get out. In this kind of configuration, the people are simply surprised."

For his sixth film, Im Sang-soo has created an erotic thriller and once again explores the themes of sexuality and mores. These themes have often been dealt with by Korean films in the 1950s. At that time, no South Korean film had been shown in Cannes. We had to wait for Lee Doo-Yong and Mou Le Ya Moul Le Ya, selected for Un Certain Regard in 1984, to see the country make its entry into the Festival. This discreet entry was followed by a second feature film also selected for Un Certain Regard in 1989, Why has Bodhi-dharma left for the East?, by Yong-Kyun Bae.

Since 1997, the country has presented on average three films a year in the different selections of the Festival. Five have won awards, including Oldboy which won the Grand Prix for Chan-Wook Park in 2004, and Thirst, by the same director, awarded the Jury Prize in 2009.

http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/theDailyArticle/57508.html

Press Conference: The Housemaid by Im Sang-soo

Im Sang-soo gave his press conference for The Housemaid at 13.00, just after the screening of the film In Competition. The three actors Jeon Do-Youn, Lee Jung Jae and Youn Yuh-Jung were alongside him.

Chosen extracts.

An original, a remake, two generations as seen by Im Sang-soo:

“This is a film which is fifty years old. Society has changed a lot, we are now in 2010 and I wanted the film to reflect Korean and international society. […] Korean society has developed very quickly. But what needs to be remembered is: ‘have reactions changed in fifty years?’”

Im Sang-soo on filmmaking and the financial crisis:

“The financial crisis has affected the whole world and Korean cinema has had its difficulties. I’ve been faced with a lot of difficulties in my life, but instead of complaining, I prefer to get on with it.”

Im Sang-soo, in response to the question: “How could you dare state your film would be ‘the least boring In Competition?’”

“I think that’s what all the directors think: you always make films that you’d want to see. Was it clever to say that ? You’ll find out at the end of the Competition.”

Photocall "The housemaid" de IM Sangsoo

Video: http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/mediaPlayer/10450.html

Interview de l'équipe du film "The housemaid" de IM Sangsoo

Video: http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/mediaPlayer/10454.html

Conférence de presse de "The Housemaid de " de IM Sangsoo

Video: http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/mediaPlayer/10467.html

Audio: http://www.festival-cannes.fr/mp3/tUPmKBp9YqW9_en.mp3

[melusine]

Video: [YTN]

via Fotoglif, Cine21, Yonhap News, Hankook Ilbo, E Daily, No Cut News, Herald Biz, Star News, Star News, Star News, Newsen, Newsen, Newsen, Newsen, OSEN, OSEN, Asia Economic Daily, Asia Economic Daily, Joy News, Joy News, Sportsseoul, Sportsseoul, Sportsseoul, Sportsseoul

[melusine]

The Housemaid press conference discusses Korean society's evolution

credit: Cine21

by Lauren Ellison, Fest21.com

15.05.2010

Im Sangsoo's film The Housemaid screened Friday at the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival. A remake of Kim Ki-young's 1960 film of the same name, The Housemaid is one of two Korean films in competition at this year's festival. The press conference following the film's screening featured pointed questions from reporters from all over the world. Many were curious about Sangsoo’s reasoning for remaking such an iconic Korean film.

Sangsoo reasserts that his film is more of a reinterpretation than aremake, as it would be unrealistic to portray today's Korean society exactlythe same as it was in 1960. Sangsoo says his primary goal is to provoke areaction from audiences, whether they have seen the original film or not.Though society has evolved since the 60s, the overreaching themes of the original film still exist today. What have changed, according to Sangsoo, are people's reactions and attitudes toward these same situations. The Housemaid remarks upon two societies: the haves and the have-nots, who cohabit but never meet. This film draws attention to the differences in today's society and 1960s society, but also remarks upon what is, in fact, the same.

The press posed several specific questions to the film's cast. One ofthe film's leading actors, Jean Do Youn, had taken several years off from acting before taking this film. Do Youn accredits her leave of absence to her decision to spend time with her new husband and child, but also comments that no worthy screenplays were coming her way. Her character in The Housemaid, she said, was a rare opportunity not to be missed. Lee Jung-Jae commented that he enjoyed working with an all-female cast. “There was no rivalry with other male actors!” he joked.

Sangsoo is known for incorporating elements of sociology into his films, and many remarked that The Housemaid was no different in this sense. When asked why he often chooses to tell his stories through women, Sangsoo grinned and replied,"Well it's simple: I just love women so much more than men."

The current financial crisis was addressed, and Sangsoo was asked about the economic obstacles he faced when making this film. Sangsoo affirmed that funding films is especially difficult in times like these, but also added that it's never been easy for filmmakers to obtain sufficient funding. "I prefer to survive and continue rather than complain," Sangsoo explained.

Revisiting the question of Korea's changing society, Sangsoo elaborated on his goals for making this film. In 1960s Korea, a woman becoming pregnant out of wedlock resulted in harsh societal repercussions. Sangsoo revisits this same touchy subject in his remake. One would like to think society has evolved over the past 50 years, to think that society has become more sympathetic and liberal regarding pregnancy, women's rights and other hot-button issues. But has it? Sangsoo expresses his hope for a reaction from his audience, to see how much, or how little, society has truly evolved.

Modestly declaring his uncertainty of whether he could equal the talent of Kim Ki-young, Sangsoo mentioned that he wanted to create a very unique senseof ironic suspense in his version of The Housemaid. He strived to create a Hitchcock-like atmosphere, claustrophobic with nuances of black humor and satire. When asked if The Housemaid is meant to be a black comedy, he explains his personal philosophy: “Life itself simply is a black comedy,” he clarified. “If you look at life coldly, it really is quite funny."

With its strong commentary on Korean society, Sangsoo was questioned regarding whether he aimed his film largely toward a Korean viewers, or if he intended this for an international audience. Sangsoo explained that the themes of his film transcend Korean society and are universally applicable. All societies struggle with many of the same social issues highlighted in The Housemaid.

As a final thought, Sangsoo added that after working in France for two years, the idea of co-production on an international level interests him greatly. The Housemaid’s commentary on Korean society is actually a commentary on the world at large, and how similar all of our struggles truly are.

[melusine]

The Housemaid launches Asia`s Cannes film offensive (Feature)

By Andrew McCathie, Monsters and Critics

May 14, 2010, 16:05 GMT

Cannes - South Korean director IM Sangsoo`s The Housemaid opens with a young woman preparing to leap to her death from a building in a busy city centre.

The opening scene of Sangsoo`s drama is in fact the end of the film`s story, which begins when the young woman goes to work as a maid in a wealthy household.

'This scene heralds the rest of the tale of the woman who commits suicide,' said Sangsoo at a press conference marking the movie`s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday.

'As a spectator to these kinds of events one does not often realize that there is a whole tale that has lead up to this,' he said.

Played by leading Korean actress Jeon Do-yeon, the maid has an affair with the family`s father, a young high-flying business tycoon.

She falls pregnant, as a result triggering a series of events that turn the film into a thriller with flashes of black humour and eroticism.

The question that also emerges as the film unfolds is who will win the power struggle as the maid sheds her initial naivety to become an increasingly assertive and eventually unhinged character.

Sangsoo`s movie is a remake of the 1960`s film The Housemaid by Kim Ki-young.

But the 48-year-old Sangsoo said his film was different to the original.

'I could not do it again because things have changed a lot,' he said. 'It reflected Korea in the 1960`s. I wanted to reflect on the Korean and international society today.'

But he went on to say that that interested him was whether society`s reactions to sex scandals have changed. 'The women becomes pregnant, but have people really changed?' he asked.

Sangsoo`s film was one of a slew of movies from Asian directors that are to be rolled out in Cannes as part of the festival`s main competition lineup.

This includes his compatriot Lee Chang-dong who returns to Cannes this year with a weighty drama Poetry, which features `60s movie icon Yun Joeng-hie as a woman seeking the meaning of life as she battle Alzheimer`s.

The selection of two Korean films to join the race for the festival`s coveted Palme d`Or (Golden Palm) comes as the nation`s motion picture industry slowly emerges from a crisis sparked by overproduction and ballooning budgets.

China also gained a last-minute slot in Cannes` prestigious top category with Wang Xiaoshuai`s Rizhao Chongqing (Chongqing Blues).

The Asian film industry has travelled to Cannes hoping to build on its recent run of success at the world`s major film festivals.

Filipino Brillante Mendoza last year won Cannes` award for best director for Kinatay while Korea`s Park Chan-wook was awarded the jury prize for Thirst. China`s Mei Feng took home the best screenplay award for Spring Fever.

A total of 19-films form this year`s main competition in Cannes including cult-Japanese director Takeshi Kitano`s violent gangster movie Outrage.

Quirky Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul also makes his return to Cannes this year with Loong Boonmee Raluek Chaat (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), which was inspired by a Buddhist monk`s sermons.

The Housemaid also marks Jeon Do-yeon`s return both to movie making and to Cannes.

Dubbed the Queen of Cannes by the Asian media, the 38-year-old Jeon won Cannes` best actress award for her performance in Lee Chang-dong`s Secret Sunshine three years ago. Since then she has taken time out to have a family.

Sangsoo`s The Housemaid is mostly set in the family`s vast and modern home that is both claustrophobic and at times menacing.

This helps to give the film a touch of Alfred Hitchcock`s North by Northwest.

The home in Sangsoo`s film has all the trappings of a prosperous western life-style - an impressive store of wine and an art collection. Played by Korean heartthrob Lee Jung-Jae, the father is also an accomplished classical pianist.

But insists Sangsoo film sets are quite similar. 'You either see the houses of the rich or the poor,' he said. 'You film it like a huge spire web that imprisons the characters.'

[melusine]

The Housemaid (Hanyo)

14 May, 2010 | By Lee Marshall, Screen International

Dir-scr: Im Sang-soo. Korea. 2010. 106 mins.

Tasty, full of black humour, but finally upended by the mannerist games it plays so ably, erotic thriller The Housemaid is a smart but shallow remake of Kim Ki-young's cult 1960 Korean movie of the same name.

Outside of Korea, few will be playing the comparison game, so perhaps it matters little that Im Sang-soo's glossy refurbishment has none of the scary weirdness of the original. But given the director's obtrusive namechecking of Hitchcock prior to the film's Cannes competition debut, a little more suspense would have been nice.

That said, this is a calculatedly commercial number that should do better than any of Im's films to date, A Good Lawyer's Wife included. In Korea, where the film was released on May 13 to coincide with its Cannes press screening, the continuing notoriety of Kim's original and the recognisability of the cast (including veteran You Yuh-Jung, who starred in two of Kim's post-Housemaid films in the early 1970s) should ensure a strong opening. Internationally, Pretty Pictures' acquisition of the film for France (where it opens on September 15) should be the first of many bites for Mirovision.

It's not Old Boy by a long, long chalk, but it'll do for the Asian cult fans until something more substantial comes along.

Perhaps the most seductive thing about the film is the hyper-real ambience of the upscale Korean household it plays out in - the biggest and most expensive purpose-built set in Korean film history.

The mansion that belongs to wealthy businessman Hoon (Lee Jung-jae) and his pregnant trophy wife Hae-ra (Seo Woo) is a perfect simulacrum of the cultured consumer lifestyle, with its expensive valve amplifiers, scenographic techno-fireplace, carefully placed contemporary paintings and melodramatic-minimalist piano room. In fact, if there's a true Hitchcock echo it's here: as in North by Northwest, a spikily modern house becomes a menacing presence.

Jeon Do-youn, who picked up the Cannes Best Actress award in 2007 for her role in Secret Sunshine, plays Eun-yi, a naïve and childlike woman of uncertain background who is taken on as a junior housemaid by stern matron Byung-sik (Youn Yuh-Jung), a housekeeper to Hoon, Hae-ra and their eerily perfect and solemn little daughter Nami (Ahn Seo-hyun).

Eun-yi immediately hits it off with Nami but is treated more distantly by his posh bimbo mother, huge with twins, who spends much of her time flicking through coffee table books the size of coffee tables.

Hoon is soon exercising his droit de seigneur over the new maid, who turns out to be up for it - not as a practiced seductress, more as a kid let loose in an erotic sweet shop. Meanwhile, show-stealing Byung-sik, who supplies most of the comic moments but is also the films most interesting character, plays a double game, professing her contempt for the masters she serves, yet shopping Eun-yi to Hae-ra's cold and calculating mother Mi-hee (Park Ji-young) as soon as she discovers the new maid is pregnant.

It's not until this point, a good forty minutes in, that the film remembers that it's supposed to be not so much a stylised study of power and servitude as a thriller. But despite some appetising performances, The Housemaid never builds anything like the tension of its fifty-year-old inspiration.

The problem is partly one of poise: the rhythms are just too measured, the crane shots, overhead shots and set pieces all a little too studied. If only some of the energy that had gone into getting the look right had been expended on the story: the ending, in particular, seems like a desperate afterthought, played for spectacle rather than dramatic truth.

Production companies: Mirovision Inc, Sidus FNh

International sales: Mirovision Inc, +82 2 3443 2553

Producer: Jason Chae

Executive producer: Choi Pyung Ho, Seo Bum-seok

Cinematography: Lee Hyung Deok

Production designer: Lee Ha-jun

Editor: Lee Eun-soo

Music: Kim Hong-jip

Main cast: Jeon Do-youn, Lee Jung-jae, Youn Yuh-jung, Seo Woo, Ahn Seo-hyun, Park Ji-young

[melusine]

The Housemaid -- Film Review

By Maggie Lee, Hollywood Reporter

May 14, 2010 05:41 ET

Bottom Line: An operatic, sensuous social satire that dares to be different from the original classic.

CANNES -- Kim Ki-young's "The Housemaid," about a domestic helper's revenge after her affair with the master goes sour, is a gem of Korean cinema. Im Sang-soo's version, far from being a masterpiece, is not even subtle. Yet, he deserves credit for his gutsy departure from the original, rather than doing a carbon copy "remake" a la Gus Van Sant's "Psycho." The outcome is a flamingly sexy soap opera whose satire on high society is sometimes as savage as Claude Chabrol's "La ceremonie."

Presold by Mirovision to French distributor Pretty Pictures in March, the film could have a crack at both art house and genre markets in Europe as well as limited runs in the U.S.

Admittedly, the film has serious flaws, notably the abrupt and awkward character transition of the lead role, plot developments are glaringly melodramatic, exploding in an ending that not only defies script logic but is sure to incense pro-Kim purists. But the three female leads' high voltage chemistry, the sumptuous mis en scene (the biggest set in Korean film history), stylish symmetric compositions and lilting (perhaps Wong Kar-wai influenced) string score offers such sensory pleasure while pacing is so smooth that two hours seem to glide by imperceptibly.

When Euny (Jeon Do-yeon) is hired as a nanny and housemaid by a wealthy household, she is treated with perfunctory courtesy by the pregnant mistress Hera (Seo Woo), the cultivated master Hoon (Lee Jung-jae) and the fastidious housekeeper Choi Byung-shik (Youn Yuh-jung). But after succumbing to Hoon's brazen seduction, she gets pregnant. Hera and her mother conspire to remove this marital threat at all costs.

In the 1960 original, the family has toiled for years to fulfill their bourgeois dream, and half the drama is driven by the socially marginal housemaid's vengeful destruction of that dream. Im's class dynamic is more extreme, dwelling on the decadent rich's oppression of Euny, and highlighting the futility of her defiance. The most sardonic moment occurs when young miss Nami casually tells Euny that her dad taught her to be polite to people as a strategy to get one's selfish way.

In Kim Ki-young's gothic rendition of unchecked female sexuality as a destructive force, the male protagonist is seen fending off young working women. Im, whose previous works used sex to draw attention to women's exploitation and repression in Korean society, humanizes Euny by making Hoon the seducer. Despite the tastefully erotic way in which the sex scenes are shot, Hoon's chauvinism is apparent in the imperious tone of his language and sexual demands.

However even with Jeon's calibrated performance, Euny's characterization is problematic. Her innocence is supposed to set her employers calculation in bold relief, but the absence in motivation of her behavior does not really convince. Seo makes a stunning presence with her brittle beauty, which renders her role's scheming nature all the more chilling. It is Youn, star in a 1970 film by Kim, who dominates in the most complex role, providing suspense and a moral compass via her struggles with her conscience and shifting allegiances.

The film abounds with references to the original's famous cinematic tropes -- the staircase, the piano, the windows, but without the same impact as social and psychological signifiers. Instead, Im expresses danger and discord through an alternative mis en scene with ravishing color contrasts (stark black and white playing against Wedgewood blue and gray) and palatial interiors whose harmony is deliberately disrupted by murals of severe lines or cubic shapes

Venue: Festival de Cannes -- Competition

Sales: Mirovision Inc.

Production companies: Pretty Pictures, Sidus FnH, Mirovision Inc.

Cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Youn Yuh-jung, Lee Jung-jae, Seo Woo

Director-screenwriter: Im Sang-soo

Produced by: Jason Chae

Executive producers: Choi Pyung Ho, Seo Bum-seok

Director of photography: Lee Hyung Deok

Production designer: Han Ah Reum

Music: Kim Hong Jip

Costume designer: Choi Se Yeon

Editor: Lee Eun Soo

No rating, 120 minutes

[melusine]

The Housemaid

Hanyo (South Korea)

By Justin Chang, Variety

Posted: Fri., May 14, 2010, 9:06am PT

A SidusFNH release of a SidusFNH-Benex Cinema Fund1 presentation, in co-presentation with Michigan Venture Capital/CJ Venture Investment/Stareast Digital Lab/Hanwha Entertainment Fund No. 1, of a Mirovision production, in co-production with SidusFNH. (International sales: Mirovision, Seoul.) Produced by Jason Chae. Executive producers, Choi Pyung-ho, Seo Bum-seok. Co-producers, Choi Pyung-ho, Kim Dong-won, Kim Kyung-hyun. Directed, written by Im Sang-soo, based on the 1960 film directed by Kim Ki-young.

With: Jeon Do-yeon, Lee Jung-jae, Youn Yuh-jung, Seo Woo, Park Ji-young, Ahn Seo-hyun, Hwang Jung-min, Moon So-ri, Kim Jin-ah.

Doing an elegant upholstery job on one of the key Korean films of the '60s, writer-director Im Sang-soo demonstrates an eye for luscious surfaces but fairly ludicrous dramatic instincts in "The Housemaid." Not just a remake but a wholesale rethink of Kim Ki-young's deranged black-and-white classic, this high-end softcore thriller is juicily watchable from start to over-the-top finish, but its gleeful skewering of the upper classes comes off as curiously passe, a luxe exercise in one-note nastiness. Still, pic should be well served by offshore arthouses, while its Cannes competition berth will boost Im's profile abroad.

Likely aware of the potential pitfalls of revisiting an acknowledged masterpiece (Kim's "Housemaid," rediscovered at a 1997 Pusan retrospective, is regularly cited as one of the top Korean films of all time), Im has opted to subvert almost every element of that film's dramatic template. Where the 1960 pic was a middle-class morality tale about a striving Korean clan torn apart by a psychotic, sexually rapacious servant girl, the new film reshuffles its sympathies entirely, setting its melodrama among a brood of wealthy vipers who think nothing of using and abusing the naive young woman they hire to cook and clean.

That would be Euny (Jeon Do-yeon), who's brought in by elder housekeeper Byung-sik (Youn Yuh-jung) to work for Hoon (Lee Jung-jae), a master as handsome as his estate, and his very pretty, very pregnant wife Hera (Seo Woo). We know little about Euny when she arrives and learn little more by the end, but she seems genuinely if vaguely well-intentioned, striking up a warm rapport with the couple's young daughter. And unlike the original maid played by Lee Eun-sim (whose homewrecking antics reportedly had auds screaming "Kill the richard simmons!" at the screen), Jeon's Euny is a passive if receptive victim when Hoon surprises her in her quarters one evening and orders her to perform one of the film's two acts of simulated fellatio.

While there's nary a bottle of rat poison in sight, "The Housemaid" winks often and knowingly at its source, particularly in its engrossing first half: Hoon, like his earlier counterpart, is an accomplished pianist, and as in the original, the housemaid becomes pregnant, at which point the affair becomes known to all.

It's here that the two films part company. Where Kim's original treated the husband's dalliance as the failure of a morally upright man, Im's film casually dismisses it as customary behavior for the privileged elite, then introduces the cold-blooded character of Hera's mother (Park Ji-young, looking more like an older sister), who takes a mercenary approach to getting rid of Euny.

"This is how this family solves problems," Byung-sik remarks, spelling out almost the entirety of "The Housemaid's" anti-rich subtext, which amounts to shooting fish in a very expensive barrel. Morphing from a dryly funny satire of upper-crust mores to a contemptuous attack on its willfully shallow characters, the pic feels strangely dated, even retrograde, especially compared with Kim's still-vital original. (This one could be set in any era; when Euny complains that her masters have confiscated her cell phone, it feels like perfunctory acknowledgment of the present-day setting.)

One of the most protean of Korean thesps, Jeon vanishes sympathetically into a character markedly less rich than her roles in pics such as "Secret Sunshine" and "My Dear Enemy," while Youn (who also appeared in Im's "The President's Last Bang" and "A Good Lawyer's Wife") supplies gusto and nuance as the boozy Mrs. Danvers-like housekeeper who both rebukes and consoles Euny.

Best in show is the production design; pic was shot on a 2,300-square-foot set (the largest in Korean production history), all gleaming black-marble countertops and white porcelain bathtubs, the better to be artfully stained with blood when the key moment arrives. Lee Hyung-deok's lensing is outstanding, often bisecting the widescreen frame to fine effect.

Camera (color, widescreen), Lee Hyung-deok; editor, Lee Eun-soo; music, Kim Hong-jip; supervising art director, Han Ah-reum; art director, Bae Jung-yoon; set decorator, Yang Hyeon-mi; costume designer, Choi Se-yeon; sound, Eun Hee-soo; associate producer, Kim Jin-sup; assistant director, Seo Jung-Hhun. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 13, 2010. Running time: 106 MIN.

Cannes critics stir after early snooze

'Another Year,' 'Of Gods and Men' offer hope at fest

By Justin Chang, Variety

Posted: Tue., May 18, 2010, 10:04am PT

To judge from the early headlines, the 63rd Cannes Film Festival was doomed to disappoint before it even began.

No Terrence Malick, barely any American films in competition (aside from Doug Liman's yet-to-screen "Fair Game"), a roster of auteurs that didn't exactly quicken the pulse -- for some, hardly enough incentive to brave the threat of stormy weather and ash-induced travel delays.

High-profile absences seemed to further dampen spirits: "Robin Hood" director Ridley Scott, recovering from knee surgery, was an opening-night no-show. Far more upsetting for the Cannes faithful, Jean-Luc Godard canceled his appearance, as if to underline the words that conclude his abstruse Un Certain Regard entry, "Film Socialisme": "No comment."

Those who did make the trek to the Croisette seemed ready to have their hopes dashed, or else arrived with no hopes at all. That may partly explain why almost every press screening in the official selection so far has drawn generally polite applause and none of the trademark Cannes catcalls -- as if the titles on offer weren't even worth one's scorn.

It was startling, then, to hear a smattering of boos after Monday night's first press screening of Abbas Kiarostami's "Certified Copy." Slightly refreshing, perhaps, as a reminder that this festival is still capable of stinging even the most jaded audiences into fits of anger, yet still an inexplicable reaction to one of the competition's most likable entries -- too likable, perhaps, for the Iranian master's hardcore acolytes, those who like their Kiarostami pure, remote and untainted by any affiliation with Juliette Binoche.

Entirely accessible, yet no less brainy and experimental than much of the director's recent work, "Certified Copy" is a beguiling "Before Sunset"-style walker-and-talker, starring William Shimell and a never-more-radiant Binoche as a man and woman (the precise nature of their relationship keeps shifting throughout) spending a golden afternoon together in Tuscany. A sly charmer as well as a bit of a head-scratcher, the film self-consciously poses the question as to whether a derivation can have aesthetic value in its own right. Kiarostami clearly allows room for argument, but "Copy," though clearly conceived under the spell of Roberto Rossellini and Richard Linklater, nonetheless strikes me as something disarmingly new.

Another standout: "Another Year," the marvelous new ensemble piece by Kiarostami's fellow Palme d'Or laureate Mike Leigh. Ruefully funny as ever, at least before it turns piercingly sad, the British helmer's latest slice of working-class life isn't exactly a revelation, but instead finds Leigh further refining the extended-rehearsal method he and his superb repertory of actors have mastered over the years. Cannes doesn't often award a filmmaker a second career Palme, but this year's Tim Burton-led jury could do worse than split the actress prize between Ruth Sheen and Lesley Manville, whose maddening, heartbreaking turn suggests a disillusioned older version of "Happy-Go-Lucky's" Poppy (imagine a chirpy dipsomaniac who still hasn't learned to drive and you're halfway there).

Also in fine form was past jury prizewinner Xavier Beauvois, whose fact-based "Of Gods and Men," a hushed, visually immaculate account of a group of French monks coming under siege in Algeria in 1996, drew resounding applause at its Tuesday morning press screening.

Similarly concerned with tough moral choices in the face of real-world turmoil, Mahamet-Saleh Haroun's "A Screaming Man" became the first Chadian feature to play in competition, a distinction it earned with a moving fable of fatherly betrayal, unfussily told and beautifully framed.

Elsewhere, in line with most attendees' expectations (or lack thereof), the 2010 competition seems unlikely to go down as one for the ages. Like "Robin Hood," Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" and Woody Allen's "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," all filling the festival's star-wattage quota out of competition, most of the titles in the main program have met with either mild shrugs or widely diverging reactions.

Lines were sharply drawn between fans and detractors of "Biutiful," the latest from international heavyweight Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (a 2006 Cannes bridesmaid for "Babel"). Placing an excellent Javier Bardem in service of a strenuously grim melodrama, "Biutiful" was, for some watchers, the film that got the Palme conversation started -- a fact that ultimately speaks less to its artistic merits than to its ponderous self-importance.

Also splitting audiences down the middle were Bertrand Tavernier's historical costumer "The Princess of Montpensier," admired by some for its intelligence and expert action sequences but derided by others as too stodgy by half; and Takeshi Kitano's "Outrage," hailed as a return to gangster-thriller glory in some quarters but dismissed elsewhere as a crudely reductive exercise.

More or less quickly forgotten were the competition's first two offerings: Mathieu Amalric's "On Tour," a diverting but patchy burlesque romp whose most sexually charged moment takes place between two fully clothed individuals in a gas station; and Wang Xiaoshuai's "Chongqing Blues," an evocative, well-acted (by Wang Xueqi) but overly contrived tale of cross-generational angst.

Showing more staying power in festgoers' minds was "The Housemaid," which, in the absence of an "Antichrist"-style scandale, provided the competition's obligatory dose of sex and violence, though at much more genteel levels. Im Sang-soo's remake of the same-titled 1960 Korean classic proved disappointingly shallow, but few would deny that this lurid, lavish potboiler emerged one of the festival's most watchable movies. As adultery dramas go, a more satisfying selection might have been Radu Muntean's Un Certain Regard entry "Tuesday, After Christmas," which brings a laserlike dramatic focus to a mundane man-cheating-on-his-wife scenario.

Further evidence of Romania's cinematic renaissance (along with "Aurora," Cristi Puiu's slow-burning follow-up to his 2005 Cannes sensation "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu"), pic offered early confirmation of the suspicion, held by many festgoers, that Un Certain Regard might well upstage the main event this year.Further corroborating that theory was "Heartbeats," Xavier Dolan's achingly hip, gorgeously overwrought ode to youthful jealousy and desire. To be sure, Dolan's slow-mo fashion-commercial aesthetic is the very definition of an acquired taste, but for those in the mood for Wong Kar-wai-style ravishment, this sophomore feature marked an astounding display of cinematic verve from the 21-year-old Canadian helmer. At the other end of the age spectrum, tireless 101-year-old Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira was on hand to present his exquisite ghost story "The Strange Case of Angelica," a classically shot feature that makes subtle use of visual effects to generate its simple, otherworldly power.

As always, the festival found a way to put utterly dissimilar films in fascinating conversation with one another. Charles Ferguson's very well-received documentary "Inside Job" was one of at least three films to address the economy (the others being "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" and Directors' Fortnight item "Cleveland vs. Wall Street"). Gilles Marchand's "Black Heaven" and David Verbeek's "R U There?" both explored the perils of too much videogaming.

And Lucy Walker's nuclear-nightmare docu "Countdown to Zero" found a hilarious companion-piece in Gregg Araki's "Kaboom." The most frankly enjoyable college sex comedy to come along in many a moon, Araki's pansexual sci-fier proved well-nigh irresistible, offering doom, yes, but no disappointment.

[melusine]

So-So So Far

By Todd McCarthy, indieWIRE

May 14, 2010

“The Housemaid”

An Asian competition entry of a distinctly different nature is Im Sang-soo’s sexually juicy, stylistically sleek, dramatically over-the-top melodrama “The Housemaid.” Officially a remake of a 1960 South Korean picture of the same name, this update reportedly bears little resemblance to the original, with two central characters having been added. But it does carry some crippling baggage of another era in its reliance on what feel like dated notions of extreme class warfare, with lower-stationed people bowing and scraping and otherwise allowing themselves to be completely trampled by their economic betters.

All the same, Im directs the hell out of the story, which has a comely woman (Jeon Do-youn, who won the best actress prize in Cannes three years ago for “Secret Sunshine”) hired as a maid by an insanely wealthy family living in a house that would strike envy into the hearts of most residents of Beverly Hills and Bel-Air. Overseen by a forbidding Mrs. Danvers-type older housekeeper, Jeon’s Eun-yi is specifically assigned to cater to the spoiled and vastly pregnant wife, who will soon give birth to twins, and her agreeable young daughter.

But, the member of the household Eun-yi will soon most importantly be servicing is the husband, a handsome, arrogant man of privilege who secretly exercises his presumed droit de seigneur with the help in a couple of particularly lubricious scenes, the first of which comes immediately after he’s engaged in an unexpected session with his about-to-drop wife. Nothing, including Eun-yi’s eventual pregnancy, escapes the attention of the older maid, while the master manipulator of all is the wife’s cunning and glamorous mother, who knows how to play everyone.

Ultra-attentive to everything from the characters’ specific sexual quirks to the extravagant, Western-aping lifestyle of a certain strata of the Korean ultra-rich, Im, whose best-known previous film was “The President’s Last Bang,” doesn’t miss a trick in portraying the gamesmanship at play, and the film’s look is positively voluptuous. It was also a provocative and smart decision to reverse the situation from the 1960 film and have the wife played by a younger and hotter actress than the one cast as the maid. The performances are on the money all around.

Finally, a major aspect of the violent conclusion is confusing to the point of bafflement and the importance attached by the upper class to keeping everyone beneath in their place, and the willingness of the victims to take all the abuse dished out, feels somewhat antiquated, redolent of an earlier time. There’s a “Fatal Attraction” air to the proceedings that could easily cue an American version, but some thematic re-balancing would be required.

Cannes Diary Day Three: Wall Street 2, The Housemaid, Chatroom, Beach Parties

By Anne Thompson, indieWIRE

May 14, 2010 at 2:06pm PDT

A welcome surprise was Im sang-Soo’s South Korean remake The Housemaid, a taut, stylish thriller about a fetching naive housemaid (Jeon Do-Youn) in a wealthy household who gets involved with her handsome Master of the Universe boss (Lee Jung-Jae)—with disastrous results.

This is not your typical slow-moving Cannes treacle. And according to Time Out Chicago critic Ben Kenigsberg, who watched the original film on Mubi (who cares what the site is called if it works well?), the new version of the 60s classic turns the woman from a scheming vixen who holds the family for ransom when she gets pregnant, to a victim of the family who is dead-set on revenge. The movie falls solidly into Hitchcock/Losey suspense territory, where a vulnerable woman is in terrible danger. It’s intense, well-written, well-acted by a gorgeous cast and elegantly designed and directed. The film also boasts a slam-bang shocker ending and coda that have sparked heated debate. This could be picked up by a stateside distributor; it’s nasty, sexy and deliciously disturbing.

[melusine]

The Housemaid (하녀)

South Korea

Contemporary drama

Directed by Im Sang-soo (임상수)

By Derek Elley, Film Business Asia

Fri, 14 May 2010, 09:17

Actress Jeon Do-yeon shines in a super-stylish, erotic drama with less depth than it thinks. Robust festival potential, plus decent arthouse chances beyond Asia.

Story

Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yeon), a middle-aged working-class divorcee, is hired as a housemaid to the wealthy, upper-class family of Go Hun (Lee Jeong-jae), his heavily pregnant wife Hae-ra (Seo Woo) and their young daughter Na-mi (Ahn Seo-hyeon). Eun-yi's uncomplicated, cheerful manner endears her especially to Go, with whom she soon starts an affair and becomes pregnant. Veteran head maid Jo Byeong-shik) reports the news to Hae-ra's mother, Mi-heui (Park Ji-yeong), who schemes to force Eun-yi to lose the baby and drive her out of the house. But neither Eun-yi nor her pregnancy is to be got rid of so easily.

Review

Though the films' credits claim it is "based on the original film by Kim Ki-young (김기영)", there's nothing in common between the two movies apart from a husband sleeping with his maid and the whole cast being Korean. Writer-director Im Sang-soo has taken Kim's renowned (if extremely melodramatic) 1960 B&W movie - which played with the heavily circumscribed social conventions of the time - and completely remixed the characters and even the basic story into a sleek, widescreen drama of Dangerous Liaisons-like intrigues set in an upper-class household in modern-day South Korea. A prolific genre director, Kim had already recycled his original film into two remakes (Woman of Fire 화녀, 1971; The Woman of Fire '82 화녀82, 1982), making Im's version the third re-tooling of a basically simple story of adultery.

Im's liking for pushing the sexual envelope (Girls' Night Out (처녀들의 저녁식사), with its frank sex talk; Tears (눈물), with its teenage sex; A Good Lawyer's Wife (바람난 가족), with an older woman and a teenage boy) is played out here on his most lavish stage so far. Some 80% of the movie takes place within the house itself - a lavish, modernistic-traditional folly, designed by p.d. Lee Ha-jun (이하준), reportedly the largest film set ever built in South Korea - peopled by exaggerated versions of the country's wealthy elite with a full range of western affectations (designer food, fine wines, and even the husband playing Beethoven on a grand piano). Into this stylised, emotionally sterile setting, Im's script plonks the ingenuous, warm-spirited Eun-yi, whom the husband, pampered young wife and evil mother-in-law first prey on and then find their match in.

In the 1960 version, the husband was more a victim than a sexual predator and his wife simply ultra-conservative rather than conniving, and considerable dramatic use was made of the staircase leading up to the maid's quarters in the cramped house. In Im's 2010 version, the whole sprawling mansion becomes a giant stage for a drama that has less sense of social stratification and more sense of sheer theatrics, culminating in a third act that seems at odds with the more atmospheric first act and rather leisurely mid-section. (Kim's original ended with a delicious twist that completely pulled the carpet out from under the audience; Im's coda seems simply bizarre, as stylistically out of place as the movie's gritty, DV-shot opening.)

But if this version actually has way less subtle social underpinnings than the original, it still makes an entertaining ride at a performance level. Veteran actress Yun Yeo-jeong (윤여정), who stole the show in E J-yong's recent faux documentary The Actresses (액트리스), here almost steals it again with withering one-liners and quizzical looks as the seemingly starchy head maid who privately thinks her employers are "revolting, ugly, nauseating and shameless". And the doll-like Seo Woo (서우, Crush and Blush 미쓰 홍당무, Paju 파주) and TV actress Park Ji-yeong (박지영) make a suitably nauseating daughter and mother, scheming to keep control of Lee Jeong-jae's (이정재) Adonis-like husband.

But what makes the film more than just a gorgeously designed domestic drama is the title performance of Jeon Do-yeon (전도연, Secret Sunshine 밀양, Untold Scandal 스캔들), whose ingenuously sexy playing of Eun-yi and unexpected inflections - just listen to the way she says "oops!" when caught in the family bath - mark her once again as the country's most versatile actress. With its frequent nudity and need for total unselfconsciousness, no other South Korean actress of her stature would have even gone near the role, let alone been capable of giving it such a simple erotic charge.

[melusine]

Cannes #2: A magical curtain for Jacques Tati

By Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

May 14, 2010 3:54 PM

"Definite Palme d'Or possibility," Toby Talbot told me. "Definite," Dan Talbot agreed. We'd all just come from the screening of the Official Competition selection "The Housemaid," by Sang-soo Im of South Korea. You hear predictions like that three times a day at Cannes. When it comes from the Talbots it means something. Dan Talbot founded New Yorker Films in 1965; starting even earlier the Talbots ran the beloved New Yorker theater in New York, and if you've seen classics by Herzog, Fassbinder, Godard, Wadja and Bergman, chances are they came from New Yorker. They're been coming to Cannes longer than I have, and they have a feel for these things.

"The Housemaid" is extraordinary, further evidence that right now South Korea is producing many of the best films in the world. It takes place almost entirely within the huge modern house of a very rich man, and centers on the young woman he has hired as a nanny. It involves the man, his wife, his daughter, the older woman who runs his household, and the mothers of the wife and the nanny.

This is a house where living is an expensive form of art. The couple are smooth, calm, sophisticated. They value themselves very highly. The nanny forms a bind with their 7-year-old daughter, and assistants the wife during a pregnancy with twins. More than that I choose not to specify.

But look at the mastery of the films's construction. The nuanced performances. The implacable deliberation of the plot. The way the house acts as a hothouse to force the growth of anger. And the film's unforgiving portrait of people damaged by great wealth. This is a thriller about the ideas people have of themselves.

Four screenings, from blues to bliss

By Barbara Scharres, Chicago Sun-Times

May 13, 2010 5:44 PM

"The Housemaid"

Eun (played by Jeon Do-youn, the Cannes Best Actress award winner for Im's 2007 film "Secret Sunshine") is pretty, young divorcee hired as a maid in the household of a super-wealthy couple. She has an innocent face that glows with pleasure when she even thinks about smiling. She begins her new job in the marble-floored mansion with a submissive spirit and endless cheer, although her duties range from being a nanny to hand-washing her mistress's lingerie, painting her toenails and massaging her pregnant belly.

Eun's immediate boss is the straight-laced housekeeper Byung (Youn Yuh-jung), a longtime family retainer who threateningly lords it over the naïve new maid, and maintains her power by making it her business to know everyone else's business. Byung is a manipulator, a snitch, and a bully, but in time, after Eun is willingly seduced by her cruelly self-centered master, she's the least of the adversaries that Eun needs to fear.

So much of the pleasure in watching "The Housemaid" comes from being surprised by the unexpected plot developments, and so I'm reluctant to reveal any more, except to say the every performance is a gem. If I were on the jury, I'd want to give both Jeon Do-youn and Youn Yuh-jung acting awards. I wouldn't be surprised if the "The Housemaid" gets picked up for U.S. distribution before the festival is over. Like last year's Korean Cannes sensations "Mother" and "Thirst," coming soon to a theater near you, I hope.

The Housemaid (2010)

by Geoff Andrew, Time Out London

2010-05-13 19:12:16

Director: Im Sang-soo

Reviewed at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival

Korean writer-director Im Sang-soo’s film is inspired by a classic thriller made 50 years ago by the great Kim Ki-Young. Whether that film itself derived somehow from the same novel that provided the source material for the ‘Diary of a Chambermaid’ films made first by Jean Renoir and then by Luis Buñuel, I’ve been unable to ascertain, but certainly all the main characters in Im’s film might be said, as per Renoir, to have their reasons – even if their behaviour may at times be deceitful, destructive and deadly.

Of the five, the most morally ‘innocent’ is surely the titular nanny, Eun-yi, hired by elderly housekeeper Byung-sik to help out in the mansion inhabited by rich businessman Hoon, his pregnant wife Hae-ra and their young daughter. All goes smoothly until Hoon decides to exercise droit de seigneur with Eun-yi; the divorcee goes along with it, and the older maid, suspecting her new colleague may be pregnant, informs Hae-ra’s mother of the affair, at which point events take a perilous turn for the worse.

‘The Housemaid’ is undoubtedly genre fare rather than an art movie, but it’s mostly an enjoyable suspense drama, well acted, pleasingly paced and possessed of enough subtle twists to hold the attention. The play with audience sympathies highlights the influence of Hitchcock, and one might even make modest claims for it as an acerbic commentary both on class divisions and on the corrosive effects of double standards on women’s lives and solidarity within a strictly patriarchal society.

The problem is that when vengeance finally raises its murderous head, as we’ve long known it would, it doesn’t make for as effective dramatic climax as it should have; for all the ending’s theatricality, I for one was left asking myself, ‘Is that it?’ While it was a relief not to have the film descend into the kind of gross-out grotesquerie favoured by, say, Park Chan-wook, the final ten minutes didn’t deliver the kind of surprise or spectacle that would stick in the mind. A pity, given some of the power-games that had preceded them.

Time Out rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Cannes Film Festival 2010: Wall Street 2, On Tour, The Housemaid, Aurora and Tuesday, After Christmas

by Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out Chicago

May 14th, 2010 at 2:56 pm

Im’s The Housemaid has its share of defenders. A stylish inflation of an amazing, sui generis 1960 Korean classic (which you can stream online here; it’s been remade before and is probably as iconic in Korea as Psycho is to us), Im’s film reverses the original’s central power dynamic, so that instead of wreaking havoc on the household where she works, the eponymous maid is now seduced and victimized by her ostentatiously wealthy employer. The class issues of the first film are brought to the fore with a vengeance, and the subtle sense of foreboding is scrapped. The movie holds your attention, but beyond a vertiginous mise-en-scène (and a throat-grabbing, handheld prologue), the film never quite answers the question of why it exists.

[melusine]

Cannes: Preparing for the Palme d'Or

By Richard Corliss, Time

Saturday, May. 22, 2010

Before the Festival opened, chief programmer Thierry Fremeaux declared this was a "difficult" year. That's diplomatic-speak for subpar, and Fremeaux wasn't kidding. The 63rd edition of Cannes unearthed no masterpieces, few enthrallments and a lot of dead wood from the not-quite-masters of world cinema. If the Palme d'Or at Sunday night's closing ceremony goes to one of the three films most highly praised by the critics polled by IndieWire — Mike Leigh's Another Year, Abbas Kiaorstami's Certified Copy, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives — it will reveal the meagerness of what in the past few years was a nourishing banquet. (One personal choice for the Palme d'Or: the religious drama Of Gods and Men.)

Part of the problem is that some of the stronger works, including the 5½-hr. biopic Carlos and the South Africa drama Life, After All, were deemed unsuitable for the main competition and are thus ineligible for the prizes to be awarded by Tim Burton and the rest of this year's Jury. And, as Fremeaux or any other festival programmer would say: We can discover good films; we can't invent them. Nonetheless, Cannes 2010 had plenty of movies that, if they fell short of greatness, were worth seeing and arguing over. Here are five of them.

[...]

The Housemaid, Im Sang-soo, South Korea

Many films in the competition are made by directors who are so knowledgeable about cinematic history that they refuse to traffic in its narrative seductions. Their pictures are post-thriller, post-narrative and, very nearly, post-movie. Not so Im Sang-soo, who reveres the old Hollywood style of melodrama and is pleased to give it vigorous twists. His earlier Girls' Night Out, A Good Lawyer's Wife and The President's Last Bang had story to spare, and so does his new film, a remake of Kim Ki-young's 1960 Korean noir.

Eun-yi (Jeon Do-yeon), a pretty, naive young woman of the working class, gets the position of housemaid to a wealthy family that festers with corruption and malice. The husband, a prosecutor, is a narcissistic philanderer who quickly seduces and impregnates the girl. On learning of the adultery, his wife, also pregnant (with twins), nearly smashes Eun-yi's head in with a golf club. As Eun-yi stands on a high ladder cleaning a chandelier, the wife's mother, a glamorous Dragon Lady, kicks the ladder over, hoping to kill the girl. Each family member bears animosities toward the others; but when the unity of this sick brood is threatened, they stand together. Their ally in maintaining the social order is Hoon Byung-shik (Lee Jung-jae Yoon Yeo-jung), the imperious senior housekeeper, who sees all and spills every secret, with deliciously dire results.

In the fascinating 1960 original (which can be seen on the Mubi website), the housemaid was a bedraggled schemer who played with rats and rat poison as she drove a nice family to perdition. In Im's version, Eun-yi is the working-class victim of a pampered, vindictive, near-homicidal upper class. We get it: Rich people are awful, and the poor their pawns. Beyond this reductive social view, though, The Housemaid has a silky thread of tension tightening around the viewer's rooting interest, right up to the unusual revenge Eun-yi chooses to take on her torturers. Lee Jung-jae Yoon Yeo-jung has been mentioned as a strong candidate for the actress prize, but all of the principals fill their roles with subtle or preening conviction. Some distributor should pick up this sexy thriller for release in the U.S., to show our audiences how, when American directors have abandoned the genre of melodrama, an Asian director can shock it back to life.

Best of Cannes: Dark, erotic, gorgeous "Housemaid"

This borderline-trashy yarn of adultery and class war in Korea divides Cannes critics. I vote yes!

by Andrew O'Hehir, Salon

Monday, May 17, 2010 08:15 ET

CANNES, France -- Opinions here have been sharply divided on the gorgeously photographed Korean film "The Housemaid," a sumptuous, erotic and sometimes grotesque melodrama on the subjects of adultery, money, power and class warfare. Count me as a supporter. Director Im Sang-soo, a controversial figure in Korean cinema, has performed a 21st-century update on a classic 1960 film (regarded as that nation's "Citizen Kane") and built his movie around gorgeous Korean star Jeon Do-yeon, who won the best-actress award at Cannes in 2007 ("Secret Sunshine").

Jeon plays Eun-yi, a working-class girl hired as a maid and nanny by one of Seoul's richest families. Lured into a steamy affair with her handsome, narcissistic employer, Eun-yi discovers first-hand how the ruling class can use money as a blunt instrument to subdue all difficulties. No one could call "The Housemaid" a subtle movie, and fans of the original film claim the new one is pale by comparison. I'm not sure the comparison is all that necessary or relevant; this intentionally lurid and overripe spectacle stands on its own as a black-comic drama in the vein of Paul Verhoeven and Claude Chabrol.

Although Jeon is by turns vulnerable, sexy, damaged and vengeful in the leading role, Im's rich cast features three other terrific actresses as the central female quartet chewing up the scenery and each other. Perhaps best of all is Youn Yuh-jung as the elderly servant whose apparent loyalty to the family conceals bottomless bitterness, although Seo Woo is also strong as the spoiled, jilted wife and Park Ji-young nearly steals the film as her scheming mother. This one ought to thrive as a dark-hearted art-house delight later this year.

[melusine]

Cannes 2010: THE HOUSEMAID Review

by Todd Brown, Twitch

May 15, 2010 5:00 PM

Slick, polished and sexy, Im Sangsoo's The Housemaid is the sort of film simply not made in Hollywood any more. Directed with the same icy precision displayed by the coldly amoral family at its center, The Housemaid is an entirely grown-up thriller - one driven by lust, boredom, and not particularly subtle manipulation. And the general feeling on the street is that it's also the best film to screen in Cannes so far.

A remake of a 1960 classic, The Housemaid revolves around Lee Euny. A lower class, sweetly naive divorcee, Lee begins the film working in the kitchen of a cheap restaurant and sharing a tiny apartment with her only friend. Is it any wonder that she jumps at the opportunity to become the new nanny for the enormously wealthy Hoon family? If nothing else, she'll no longer have to share a bed with her friend.

The Hoon's are outwardly perfect. He is handsome and successful, a true power broker despite his youth. She is young and beautiful and heavily pregnant with twins, new siblings for the couple's young daughter. The daughter? Obviously very intelligent and mature beyond her years in truly adorable fashion. But you know what they say about perfection ... give it a scratch and who knows what may lie beneath.

In short, what lies beneath here is Mr Hoon's penis. Despite his smooth manners, the man has the sense of entitlement that comes from having been raised in extreme wealth, with everything he has ever wanted handed to him on a platter by a servant. Literally. Add to that an absolute lack of morals and is it any surprise that when his pregnant wife is unable to finish sex the way he likes Hoon soon finds his way into Lee's bed? And whether through naivite, loneliness or an equivalent lack of scruples, Lee welcomes him there. This, of course, does not end well and the women of the family prove to be far more vicious and uncaring than even Hoon himself.

Impeccably crafted and beautifully photographed, Im has created here a true piece of cinema, a work of art buffed and polished in all the right ways while still retaining a very true sense of character and balancing all of that out with just the appropriate dash of entertainer's showmanship. The script is very good, indeed, and the entire cast virtually flawless, though Park Ji-Young deserves special mention for the coldly brutal grace with which she imbues her performance as Hoon's vengeful mother in law.

Elegant when called for, savage once you dip beneath the surface, The Housemaid is a triumph for Im and one of the strongest thrillers to emerge from Korea in the past several years.

The Housemaid

Reviewed by Aaron Hillis, Moving Pictures

(from the 2010 Festival de Cannes, screening in Competition)

Directed/Written by: Im Sang-soo

Starring: Jeon Do-youn, Lee Jung-jae, Youn Yuh-jung, Seo Woo and Ahn Seo-hyun

The late Korean auteur Kim Ki-young’s 1960 expressionist psychodrama “The Housemaid” was a tense and freaky tale of sexual obsession, moral neuroses and the then-encroaching threat of state-demanded modernization. In that film, a respectable music teacher and his pregnant wife recruit a young woman to help around the home, the status quo quickly imploding when their new hire is revealed to be a sociopathic femme fatale. She seduces the timid husband, becomes pregnant, and essentially tears the family apart, awakening in them malicious, previously dormant impulses.

A half century later, Im Sang-soo — whose cleanly stylized features “The President’s Last Bang” (2005) and “The Old Garden” (2007) were juiced by an agenda both personal and sociopolitical — has remade a film that specifically reflected the post-war anxieties of its time. Nowadays, American moviegoers are so used to rehashes and reboots that their existence is barely questioned with more than a shrug (here at the most prestigious festival in the world, tacky banners for “The A-Team” and “Gulliver’s Travels” line the Croisette), but for a Korean auteur to anachronistically re-envision one of his homeland’s most culturally significant masterworks begs the question: Why?

Like Im’s abovementioned treasures, the new “Housemaid” assumes viewers are proficient in Korean history as it lays out its plan to sabotage the original’s plot mechanics and character dynamics: An unidentified woman jumps to her death on the bustling city streets, a substitute for the momentous suicide committed out of love in the first film. One of the onlooking gawkers is the demure, naïve divorcee Lee Euny (“Secret Sunshine” star Jeon Do-youn, presumably named after her infinitely more aggressive predecessor Lee Eun-shim), who is hired by decadently wealthy composer Hoon (Lee Jung-jae) and his Stepford wife Hera (Seo Wook) to, among other chores, look after their picture-perfect young daughter Nami (Ahn Seo-hyun). Back in ’60, there were two kids and neither was endearing like Nami — and here, Hoon is the aggressor who coerces the poor, powerless Euny into the sexually explicit (though hardly erotic) affair that gets her knocked up.

Even if viewers realize they’re watching a Bizarro World remake where the mouse-killing villain has become a mousy victim and a manipulative act of self-destruction has now been cruelly exacted upon someone, “The Housemaid” still boils down to a one-note tirade on class warfare: Damn those rich people who can buy their way out of every transgression! Confirming this obvious theme, Im’s typically polished, near-constantly roving camerawork transforms the clan’s luxurious castle into an ominous prison, but it’s not enough to justify the exercise. Beyond a disturbing left-field ending that might be sickly alluding to how Kim Ki-young and his wife died in real life, the only other compelling tweak is the presence of veteran housemaid Byung-Shik (Youn Yuh-jung, who coincidentally starred in two of Kim’s films following his “Housemaid”), subtly neglected by the family in her graying years, but so skilled at her job that she knows every dirty little secret under the roof. Could this embittered, equally empowered and enslaved maven lurking in the background be the central figure in the film’s title?

[melusine]

Cannes Reviews: Pompous Robin Hood, Plus Two Great Foreign Films

By: David Edelstein and Logan Hill, New York Magazine

5/14/10 at 12:00 PM

Two very different films earned their places in the festival’s competition lineup yesterday, led by excellent performances. [...]

And in The Housemaid, Korean star Jeon Do-Yeon reinvented a classic Korean screen role, as a housemaid who is impregnated by her fabulously wealthy boss.

Half a century ago, the original film focused on a middle-class couple who hired a poor factory girl, who turned out to have manipulative goals of her own — seducing the husband and destroying the family. In Im Sangsoo's remake, the poor girl isn’t a malicious home wrecker; she’s a poor romantic caught up in an extremely bad cul-de-sac of capitalism. Do-Yeon plays a likable, naïve, and poor restaurant employee hired by a powerful Patrick Bateman–type businessman and his conniving, pregnant trophy wife. The couple’s rich meals look like leftovers from Jeunet’s Delicatessen; the wife’s plastic-faced mother is a character from Brazil; and the house looks like an abandoned set from Eyes Wide Shut. The husband demands the maid’s body, but she desires him, too, and that’s where Jeon’s understated performance makes the film less a domestic thriller and more of a psychological mystery — even as Im pushes the visuals into the realm of carnival-mirror satire.

Cannes '10 Day 2: Old maids, old masters

Posted by Wesley Morris, Movie Nation

May 13, 2010 05:41 PM

The South Koreans, meanwhile, continue to work their high-wire blend of farce, thriller, and melodrama. The occasion here is Im Sangsoo's main-competition remake of Kim Ki-Young's 50-year-old "The Housemaid." Im's movie, also about a young maid's affair with the man of the house, applies generous layers of soap opera, soft-porn, and horror to the proceedings. The movie is a major tweak, turning a lament for the ravages of class and gender into a lurid grotesque. That's fun, until the "Melrose Place"-ness of things exposes a tension in how sincere versus slick the class and gender revisions want to be. Jeon Do-Yeon, who won the best actress prize here three years ago for "Secret Sunshine," plays the young maid. And Yoon Yo-jeong plays her loony, domineering boss -- the old maid, a combination of Alexis Carrington and Marla Gibbs as the housekeeper on "The Jeffersons." The bottomless reserve of talented South Korean actors shows no signs of drying up any time soon.

Cannes '10: Day Two

by Mike D'Angelo, A.V. Club

May 14, 2010

Sadly, the sex isn't the only thing that's explicit in Im Sang-soo's perverse remake of the 1960 Korean classic The Housemaid, a movie that was plenty perverse to begin with. The original film (which you can watch for free at MUBI, formerly The Auteurs) set what must at that time have been a new standard for bugf#ck psychodrama, depicting its title character as a voracious, amoral hellcat with a penchant for seducing the boss, terrorizing the kids and furtively eyeing a handy jar of rat poison in the cupboard. I couldn't wait to see what Jeon Do-yeon, who won the Best Actress prize here three years ago for Secret Sunshine, would do with this dynamic, deranged role, never suspecting that the answer would be: nothing. Apparently determined to make the story his own, Im (whose previous films include A Good Lawyer's Wife and The President's Last Bang) has reimagined it so completely that his remake seems to have shot in OppositeScope. Once a sexual predator, the housemaid has been transformed into a passive, infantilized victim, at the mercy of a family so ostentatiously wealthy that their living-room fireplace has an aspect ratio twice as wide as the movie itself. Every destructive act, instead of being perpetrated by her, is now inflicted upon her, all in service of a painfully blunt treatise on the dangers of class warfare. ("I know you barely even see me as human," she tells her monotonously arrogant employers, in case the message somehow escaped us.) It's as if Hollywood were to remake Fatal Attraction, only this time, the other woman goes away quietly after a few passionate trysts, perfectly happy to be ignored, whereupon the husband and wife team up and spend the rest of the movie tormenting and stalking her, just for fun. What exactly would be the point of that, you ask? Good question. Grade: C

Cannes Film Festival 2010: Day Two

by Matt Noller, The House Next Door

May 14th, 2010 at 1:16 pm

I have not seen Kim Ki-young's reportedly amazing (and amazingly nuts) 1960 thriller The Housemaid, so I cannot personally confirm or deny that Im Sang-soo's adaptation is a back-asswards inversion of everything that makes the original so special. But since nearly everyone who has seen Kim's film is saying that, I'm willing to accept it. Im keeps the premise of Kim's film--Eun-yi, a poor young woman, becomes a maid for a wealthy married couple and sleeps with the husband, at which point chaos reigns—but completely reverses the dynamics within that setup. The maid (Jeon Do-yeon), the psychopathic aggressor in Kim's film, is here a passive victim, seduced by the husband (Lee Jung-Jae) and summarily exposed to mental and physical abuse by his wife (Seo Woo) and mother-in-law (Moon So-ri). I can't comment on how these changes affect the movie in relation to the original, but even without knowledge of Kim's film, the remake is a leaden, unsubtle mess. Im fashions the narrative into a blunt-force assault on class inequality, a point that is made satisfactorily within the first 15 minutes then run into the ground for another hour and a half. ("You don't even think of me as human," Eun-yi tells the husband, who then turns to his family and says, "That's just how those people are.") It's not even especially entertaining; there's no real structure or pace, and even the supposedly controversial sex scenes are too outrageously stylized to carry much subversive charge. Only in its gleefully nasty conclusion--and even more so in the hilariously nonsensical bugf#ck epilogue (or whatever) that follows--does the film come to any sort of actual life.

Cannes film festival: Countdown to Zero, The Housemaid, A Screaming Man and Outrage

By Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Monday 17 May 2010 22.00 BST

Two films screened in competition to mixed notices, but which I thought were very good indeed. Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid is a remake of a classic 1960 South Korean film, in which a malign and predatory woman destroys the family that has employed her as a maid. Im's remake is a big, brassy suspense thriller set in the household of an arrogant, super-rich businessman; his house, specially built for the film, is reportedly the most expensive set in the history of the country's cinema. The film conceives the maid, played by Jeon Do-yeon, as a far more sympathetic, ambiguous character; a woman who is sexually exploited by her boss, but who appears to be consenting in their affair. The final scenes are arguably a little too melodramatic, but this was a sleek and watchable picture.

[melusine]

Cannes Report #2: return of the Gekko

By Jason Anderson, Eye Weekly

May 14, 2010 12:05

A remake of a 1960 Korean movie by The President’s Last Bang director Im Sangsoo, The Housemaid (***) also added a rare bit of sex appeal to the competition slate. Sly, stylish and darkly comic, it’s the story of a good-hearted middle-aged woman who enters the employ of a wealthy family so decadent, they would’ve been evicted from Falcon Crest. Sexiness ensues, as does much cruelty, though the instances of Bunuelian flair do not entirely compensate for the unfortunate lack of suspense. Even so, it was a lot more scintillating than Chongqing Blues (**), a low-impact drama about a father’s search for answers about his son’s death by Wang Xiaoshuai, a Chinese director who’s yet to better 2000’s Beijing Bicycle.

Two lacklustre Asian entries blight Cannes' momentum

Two lacklustre Asian entries blight Cannes' momentum Asian films are often among the most hotly awaited, but the continent's first two competition offerings in Cannes - "Chongqing Blues" by Xiaoshuai Wang and "The Housemaid" by Im Sang-soo - left hungry cinephiles feeling distinctly underfed.

By Jon Frosch, special correspondent in Cannes, France24

14/05/2010

After a buoyant start with Mathieu Amalric's "Tournée" (On Tour), the brakes were slammed on the main line-up's momentum on Thursday and Friday by Chinese melodrama Chongqing Blues and South Korean thriller The Housemaid. [...]

Sex and violence trump character development

More compelling, though a letdown in its own way, was Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid, a remake of a classic South Korean thriller from 1960.

The film has a premise that will sound familiar to anyone who has ever seen a movie, read a novel, or turned on the television for that matter: a young housekeeper gets a new job with a rich, glamorous couple, is promptly seduced by the husband, and ends up being pulled into a treacherous game of cat-and-mouse with the wife.

Director Im - who featured in the Cannes 2005 Director's Fortnight with The President's Last Bang - juices up the style, his camera swooping through the giant, eerily pristine mansion and zooming in close on naked bodies interlocked in forbidden embrace.

But Im doesn't develop the by-now predictable plot, and the film's sedate pace stifles any suspense from this love triangle tinged with class anxiety.

And while the actors, especially leading lady Jeon do-Yeon (who took home the best actress prize at Cannes three years ago), throw themselves into their roles with relish, the characters nevertheless lack the subtle shading that would give viewers those shivers of dread and ambiguity that should have been the hallmark of this film.

Im pushes the more lurid elements of his story - the sex, the violence - to the extreme; too bad he forgot to make the rest of it matter.

Showgirls on the go

By Anupama Chopra, Hindustan Times

Mumbai, May 15, 2010 12:43 IST

Maid to order

The best film I’ve seen at Cannes so far is IM Sang-Soo’s The Housemaid. The acclaimed Korean director has reworked a 1960 film about a maid who has an affair with the master of the house into a delicate, poetic and haunting story. The film could have easily veered into melodrama-- there is even a nasty mother-in-law who seems to echo Lalita Pawar--but Sang-Soo keeps a tight rein on his narrative. And The Housemaid doesn’t hit a single false note. I hope it finds a distributor in India. If not, be sure to catch it on DVD.

As Cannes Hits Midway Point, What Films Stand Out?

Written by David Bourgeois, Movieline

17 May 2010, 4:00 PM

The Housemaid, directed by Im Sang-soo. A remake of the 1960 Korean film of the same name, this updated version reminds us that it’s never a good idea to have an affair with your kid’s nanny. And if she gets pregnant? Even worse. The overwrought drama has its moments — specifically the ending — but it’s a bloated, one-note sexual romp through Korea’s class system.

Sexy Housemaids, Selfish Parents and Children

By Margot Gerber, TheWrap.com

Published: May 15, 2010

While everyone was taking in “Robin Hood,” Oliver Stone and Woody Allen, I popped in at a couple of lesser-known international films that also have some buzz at Cannes. Both give their own special take on family relationships.

Based on the 1960 Korean film classic (directed by Kim Ki-Young) of the same title, “The Housemaid” is a stylized melodramatic, revenge thriller with a lurid plot spurred by the collision of conflicting agendas at play between a wealthy family and their hired help.

The story varies significantly from the original, but the basic premise of an affair between the nanny/maid and the man of the house -- and its ramifications -- remains at the core of this commentary on Korean society and the awkward relationship between live in servants and the families they serve.

In it, a young woman with a degree in child development goes to work for a wealthy family as nanny to their 6-year old Nami and helper to the mother, a delicate, fashionable beauty about to give birth to twins. She spends her days calmly, practicing pre-natal yoga and lounging on the couch reading (“The Second Sex”) in their palacial home. Macho husband/father, a wealthy businessman, plays classical piano and swaggers around the house indulging in red wine and baring his muscular chest beneath a silk robe.

Regimented, joyless family life plays out quietly against an austere, meticulously art-directed palette of blue, gray, black and white. The girl bonds with her loving new nanny; the bitter, older maid catches the father and nanny in a graphic sexual escapade and tells his wife the girl is pregnant. Enter the avaricious wife’s mother, who advises the cuckolded wife to stick it out, and she’ll eventually live like a queen.

“The Housemaid” seems to aim for Hitchcock or classic film noir but ends up closer to soap opera or camp territory with ripe lines like: “I should have pushed her from higher and ended things” or “I am rotten to the bone.”

Waiting for a masterpiece

By Donald Clarke, Irish Times

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

There was much to savour (and puzzle over) in Im Sang-soo’s The Housemaid.

This strange amalgam of melodrama, social comedy and soft porn is a remake of Kim Ki-young’s famous Korean film from 1960. Im, also South Korean, retains the guts of the story – a newly hired housemaid introduces sexual tension to a comfortable household – but shifts the blame from the servant to her disreputable (not to say satanic) employer and, reflecting changes in Korean society, turns the house from a modest, middle-class home to a vast, marble-bedecked mansion. It’s an invigorating, diverting piece, but it might be a little too bananas to attract the attention of the jury. Then again, that jury is headed by Tim Burton, so you never can tell.

Yes we Cannes

By Kong Rithdee, Bangkok Post

Published: 19/05/2010 at 12:00 AM

[...] Talking about the absence of shock: Two Asian films in the competition have served up the closest thing to an outre wake-up call, though their impact seemed to evaporate quickly as well. A Korean soft-core thriller, Hanyo (The Housemaid), features carefully-lit sex scenes between the muscular, ultra-rich and disgusting master and his housemaid, who is hired initially to take care of his daughter but ends up doing something much more.

Flaunting cynical humour and an irreverent critique of the upper class, the Im Sang-soo film is one of two Korean entries in the competition, an impressive record and a substantiation of Korea's status as a powerful player in world cinema (the country has also has another film in the Un Certain Regard section, as well as a short film). The Housemaid is adapted from a classic Korean film from the 1960s, but it has been updated to include an outlandish ending that doesn't really hammer home the point about the subjugation of women in Korean society. Critics, however, are waiting for another Korean film in the competition, Poetry, a heavy drama from novelist/film-maker/former culture minister Lee Chang-dong, which is screening today.

[melusine]

Cannes 2010: Has class consciousness become the festival through-line?

by Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times

May 14, 2010 | 10:41 am

Class consciousness has certainly stormed the Croisette this season.

First there was "Robin Hood," or "Robin du Bois," as it's known here, with Russell Crowe playing the mythic figure as a freedom fighter bent to take down King John, who taxes his people indiscriminately to pay for foolish foreign adventures. Then there's Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," in which the baddies are ethically challenged Wall Street billionaires. Now comes "The Housemaid," a South Korean twist on the same theme, about a young, naive maid who's seduced by her Korean master, a wine-swilling, Beethoven-playing Korean Master of the Universe.

A piece of lurid fun, "The Housemaid" is actually a remake of a famous 1960 Korean film that stormed that nation the year it premiered. The 2010 edition has a certain kitschy flair, with some exceptionally tony villainess — i.e. the master's doll-like wife and her manipulative mother who have a positively lethal hissy fit when they discover their maid is pregnant.

Hollywood films tend to finesse class differences to the point of erasure. For instance, in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," the hero is Shia LaBeouf, who's character ostensibly grew up poor. Yet once the movie actually begins, he's a loaded young trader who loves fast motorcycles. By contrast, "The Housemaid" presents a vision of feudal-like servitude amid modern-day Korean oligarchs, a condition that ultimately enrages those on the lower end of the social spectrum. Director Im Sang-Soo is clearly a devotee of Hitchcock, so the anti-elitist furor goes down with spooky, spine-tingling panache.

[melusine]

CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 14: (L-R) Producer Jason Chae, actress Yoon Yeo-Jung, writer/director Im Sang-Soo, actress Jeon Do-Yeon, and actor Lee Jung-Jae attend the Premiere of 'The Housemaid' held at the Palais des Festivals during the 63rd Annual International Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2010 in Cannes, France.

Video: http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/mediaPlayer/10479.html

credit: Getty Images, Fotoglif

<clickable thumbnails>

No hotlinking pls!

[melusine]

credit: Getty Images, Fotoglif

<clickable thumbnails>

No hotlinking pls!