The Housemaid - 下女

The Housemaid (下女) is an 2010 film out of Korea. The film stars Jeon Do-yeon, Lee Jung-jae, Seo Woo, and Yoon Yeo-jeong. The movie is a remake of a film with the same storyline from 1960.

Jeon plays Im, a recent hire as an housemaid to a wealthy family. The patriarch, Hoon, is played by Lee and Hae-ra is his wife, played by Seo Woo. The lead housemaid, Byeong-sik, played by Yoon. Im is responsible for lots of things around the house, but her primary responsibility is to take care of Hoon and Har-ra's daugher, Nami, I guessimate to around 9 years old. Hoon takes to her after seeing her a few times in situations that seemed to draw his interest in Im. One night, while Hoon is semi-drunk, he goes to Im's room and they have an affair. All hell breaks loose when Byeong finds out and reveals this to Hae=ra's mother. A snowball effect happens when Im is pregnant. Leading to a very tragic ending.

This movie was a bit hard to watch. The rich play rich and the movies portray them as gods among men. Which might be the cast, I am not rich, I have no reference point other than movies. Maybe I know a absurdly rich person? Most likely not. So, I only have the movies to tell me. Each country presents them in different ways. In this case, its in Korea. Some of the things were not immediately placable in my experience thus, I was lost and didn't understand some things. In other cases, it made perfect sense. With that in mind, I didn't quite get the whole movie.

I saw this film via Amazon Prime a few months ago. I was on and off on it due to time constraints. Thus, I had to remember quite a few times what was going on. Maybe that played into not liking the film much.