Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid firmly rests amongst the great pantheon of perverse cinema. It's one of those films where I wish I could witness first-hand the audiences' reaction when it was originally released over 70 years ago. Impeccably well-crafted, Kim Ki-Young's film language is particularly effective at elucidating the depravity of its narrative conscription through a "Hitchcockian" formal style in which tension builds and the outcome feels impossible to pin-down. From a thematic perspective, the film's denouement - one in which the fourth wall is broken - is a startling and exquisitely subversive finale yet it calls into question what precisely the filmmaker was trying to say. On its face, the gender politics at play here are particularly inducive to critique - gender roles are binary, and arguably in lockstep with patriarchal expectations. Yet, when one considers the film's startling final sequence, it stands within reason that Kim Ki-Young's approach is more about the perversity of the male ethos and the impact it has had by-and-large on the social formations of society due to its long tenure atop the social hierarchy. I'm intentionally avoiding discussing the narrative and plot of this film, but all you need to know is The Housemaid is one sly, insane, absurdist display of carnal desire and gender politics that will certainly titillate up until its transcendent, though perhaps jarring final frames
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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