The Housemaid Trailer (1960)

Trailer for The Housemaid, which screened at Fantastic Fest 2010.

Only recently discovered by occidental audiences, The Housemaid is the first film in director Kim Ki-Young’s trilogy of domestic ruin. This groundbreaking chamber piece, fraught with psychosexual madness, is now celebrated as one of the greatest Korean films of all time. It tells the story of Dong-sik (Kim Jin-kyu), a middle-class composer who gives music lessons at a local textiles factory in Geumcheon. Dong-sik invites chaos into his home when he begins an extramarital affair with the family’s mysterious new maid (Lee Eun-shim), a disturbed woman with a penchant for catching rats with her bare hands.