Wonderfully offbeat film!

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Okay guys, so this review is going to be full of SPOILERS, so don't say I didn't warn you.If ever there was a film that would put you off working as a housemaid in South Korea, this is it. I mean... you work your socks off day and night, have the most confined of conditions to sleep in, get treated with disdain by almost everyone around you and the gentleman of the house can go to your bedside every night for sexual favours. While his wife is up the duff. WITH TWINS. Yes, you read that right... these rich folks can get away with anything. Of course, it helps if you're a walking doormat who apologises for every little thing and only sees the best in people. How tragically naive these days.And when you fall pregnant yourself, decide to keep the baby... turning down some very handsome bribes in the process, what do you think happens? Why, the wife's bitchy mother will poison your drink so you'll have a miscarriage. Nice. Obviously EVERYONE has a breaking point, even someone as meek and mild as you. So, what do you do for revenge? Shoot them all dead? Electrocute them in their sleep? Nope. You HANG yourself in front of them, and just to make sure they get the point... you self-immolate too. I don't really see how this constitutes as 'getting even'... particularly as the only one affected by seeing this suicide up close would probably be their small child who doted on you. Expensive therapy bills, here we come...It's a creepy film, filled with people without a moral compass and more money than conscience. It is incredibly frustrating to watch the heroine get walked on by all and sundry, only to emerge with a smile and a "Sorry" in every situation. There arrives a time to put your foot down and say enough is enough, but when things do get that far... she takes completely the wrong option. Oh well... Still, I'm not really here to report on her mistakes (But I did anyway. Suck it up). My main task is to review, and I can say it's a well made movie, with some memorably grotesque characters, a tenuous atmosphere and plenty of surprises along the way.Most of which I've just revealed. Oops. Still, the SPOILER tag should have clued you in. And I do like to vent... 6/10

You'd better watch the original movie, 'The Housemaid' directed by Ki-Young Kim in 1960, which is one of the first and finest Korean movie I've seen so far. Compared to the original version, The Housemaid (2010) is really deceiving.The first hour is OK, but then it gets really boring, even though the acting isn't that bad. It's just a pity that such good actors' talent was wasted (see Do-Yeon Jeon in 'Sunshine (2007)' and Jung-Jae Lee in 'New World (2013)').Not to mention the ending, which reminded me Brian De Palma's 'The Fury', deceiving too.

A remake of a classic masterpiece is always been a thankless task, but since half a century has passed since 1960, when Ki-young Kim's original version came out, it is a considerable and understandable timing to do it against all odds. With the A-list actress Do-young Kim on board, at least, tedium has been successfully blocked entirely through its 106 minute running time, plus I am plain oblivious to Ki-young's version, so no prejudice by preconceived ideas will hobble my judgment. The karma has its default value from the beginning, which startles its audience with a young girl's suicidal jump, prefigures the ominous fate of our protagonist, whose standpoint has been intentionally set as more of an aroused innocent (suggesting by the tantalizing finger foreplay from the male part and a waiting-naked seduction from the female part) than an adultery victim thanks to a modern metabolism which signifies female is not always the submissive counterpart of the male-dominant society. But the comprehensive tone is much or less conflicts with this setting, with would cause some ambiguous reading of the abruptly dark ending (the final birthday scenery has a moderately sidestepping deviation which cannot gratify an sublimating closing.The film strives to distill the trite storyline (with some patent slips, e.g. the medicine swapping is cursorily done, at least taking away some original potions to keep the amount even) and saves more spatial elasticity to its actors, and the most profitable beneficiaries are Do-yeon and Yeo- jeong, both shoulder the film's strength against banality elsewhere. Do-yeon also outshines in the graphically daring sex scenes with the over-beefy Jung-Jae Lee; while Yeo-jeong is the thunder-stealer here, endowing a supporting role with a show-stopper weightiness. I have quite a few storage of South Korean DVDs (mostly recent ones) which I am pretty eager to watch, THE HOUSEMAID is not in the top-tier, but one thing is certain, I am hunting the original version now.

If I could describe Hanyo with just one word, I'd say it is personality. Indeed, both the film and its characters have so much of it that they evolve beyond the viewer's expectations, unfolding themselves at their own pace and rhythm, subtlety telling their story.The settings are amazing, such as the house in which most part of the story takes place. However, there is also where some inevitable frontal collisions with reality occur, since there's not too many people in the world who could afford a house like that, and in case they could, they would not possibly employ just two maids to take care of it. Still, such an unrealistic approach reduces the number of characters in the story and therefore makes the drama even more intense and stronger.The actors are all great, and some of the performances brought to my mind names like Bette Davis, while the overall line of direction seemed close to the very best of Park Chan-wook (that's to say, Oldboy).Hanyo is a poetic, artistic and extremely well written and conceived movie that can boast to be amongst the best films recently made, if not of all times.