JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL:A 1961 Korean film about a murderous maid was a festival hit two years ago; a superb remake reveals much about how the country has changed in 50 years, writes DONALD CLARKE
TWO YEARS ago, the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival had a surprise hit with a 50-year-old South Korean picture titled The Housemaid. You could reasonably argue that this is what film festivals are for. On a Friday evening, the Irish Film Institute's larger auditorium groaned with punters eager to catch sight of a minor legend. Few were disappointed. Kim Ki-young's film, something between a serious horror picture and a sociological treatise, details the annihilation of a middle-class family by a sexually unhinged servant.
The disruptive invader is a common theme, but the Korean film, rarely seen in the west for 40 years after its initial release, proved a genuine revelation. So much of what we'd become used to in that country's recent cinema – the menace of Park Chan-wook's work; the slippery unease of films by Kim Ki-duk – bubbled through this strange entity. The Housemaidhas belatedly (and properly) been installed as one of world cinema's indestructible gems.
It is, thus, appropriate that tonight the festival stages the Irish premiere of a remake by Im Sang-soo. Premiered at Cannes in May 2010, the new film pointedly highlights the social and economic changes that have struck Korea over the intervening half-century. Punters who have become used to the habitually transgressive nature of that nation’s cinema will welcome (or, at least, expect) the explicit sex and outbursts of violent melodrama. Fans of the original film’s quiet accumulation may require a few drops of smelling salts.
The initial set-up remains pretty much as before. A comfortable family hires a maid to help when the woman of the house becomes pregnant. Shortly thereafter, a relationship develops between the servant and the expectant father. Catastrophe soon reigns. The tone of the new film could not, however, be more different.
Kim Ki-young's picture, coming in the years when South Korea was shaking off the dust from the civil war, marked the acceleration of a golden age for the nation's cinema. Throughout 1960 and 1961, film-makers experienced a hitherto unprecedented level of artistic freedom. Such films as The Housemaidand Yu Hyun-mok's Aimless Bullet, another study of domestic disharmony, capitalised by taking insidious swipes at the prevailing complacency.
The family in The Housemaid, comfortable but far from loaded, could be a bourgeois grouping in any part of the developed world. The invading force, initially odd, eventually murderous, comes across like an avenging demon. In a disconcerting coda, delivered straight to camera, the male lead explicitly lays out the moral of the piece.
Fast-forward to the glossier Korea of the present. Whereas the earlier family lived a life of modest comfort, the current breed wallows in levels of opulent vulgarity that would shame the Ewings of Dallas. Even the smallest household object seems to have been personally designed and delivered by Philippe Starck. Complacency has been replaced by genuine malevolence.
Though the explicit moralising has gone, Im Sang-soo expresses a conspicuous disgust at, as he sees it, the rampant materialism of the modern Korean state.
The new film is also kinder to its antagonist. Kim Ki-young’s piece places much of the blame on the young proletarian. The remake, informed by feminism, seems less appalled by female sexuality.
What we have, then, is a kind of dual portrait of South Korean mores as they developed through the later years of the 20th century. Unusually for a remake, the current Housemaidfunctions as a neat complement (and compliment) to its distinguished predecessor. Watch both.
The Housemaidplays at Cineworld tonight at 9pm. jdiff.com
THREE TO SEE
FOR 80 DAYS
Brillante Mendoza, renowned for the notorious Kinatay, offers a portrait of two elderly Philippine women attempting to cope with the consequences of a murder.
The Screen, 8.30pm
SUBMARINO
Thomas Vinterberg, the Danish maestro behind Festen, returns with a characteristically grim drama about two troubled brothers struggling with addiction. Powerful stuff.
The Screen, 4.20pm
THE ROBBER
Terrific Austrian drama concerning a criminal who, after being released from prison, juggles bank robberies with training for gruelling marathons. Based on a true story.
Cineworld, 6.30pm
