antoniocasaca123 Thankfully, the South Koreans now make very good movies, perhaps the best in the world in this century, as this does not seem to happen in 1960, at least that's the conclusion you get from seeing this "hanyo". Halfway through, the movie is still going to be reasonable, like the fact that we slowly see that all characters are, in one way or another, "evil". From the middle of the movie everything becomes very bad, the story becomes boring and improbable, the end is the worst I've seen (almost laughable), the performances of the actors are very weak (with the exception of the actress who plays the protagonist's wife). After having seen dozens of Korean films from the last 20 years, it was a disappointment to me this "hanyo", my expectations were high. And the film even promises in the beginning, a pity that afterwards is completely lost and from half to look like an authentic "Mexican novel".

Claudio Carvalho In the 60's in Korea, the piano teacher Mr. Kim works in a factory giving music classes to the workers. When he receives a love letter from the student Miss Kwak, he delivers the letter to the supervisor and the worker is suspended for three days.Mr. Kim is a family man, married with two children, the girl Aw-Soon and the boy Chang-Soon, and he has just built and moved to a bigger house of his own. His wife Mrs. Kim also works too much at a sewing machine and they need a housemaid to help her in the housework. Mr. Kim asks Kwak's best friend, Miss Kyung Hee Cho, who is his private student of piano, to help him to find a housemaid. Miss Cho invites an unstable and unbalanced young woman to work for Mr. and Mrs. Kim and she introduces the housemaid to the family. Mr. Kim hires the youth and brings her to the household. But soon she behaves in a strange way, snooping Mr. Kim's private classes until the night that she seduces Mr. Kim and they have intercourse. The housemaid gets pregnant and uses her condition to press Mr. Kim. When she provokes a miscarriage, she blackmails Mr. Kim leading to the family's destruction. "Hanyo" is a masterpiece of obsession in a weird culture, i.e., in a culture absolutely different from the westerns. The melodramatic story is absolutely unpredictable, has wonderful performances, but I can not even imagine a western being submitted by the outrageous situation that Mr. Kim and his family have to live due to the blackmail of their housemaid. The devotion to family is part of the Confucianism but after the death of the boy, it is inadmissible even to think a family man allowing the killer to stay in the household and to have sex with her. The conclusion is totally unexpected and it is funny to hear that this sort of thing may happen to any man. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Hanyo, A Empregada" ("Hanyo, the Housemaid")

Boba_Fett1138 This movie was a real surprise. I knew nothing about this director, or 'old' Korean cinema, so I had no idea what to expect from this movie. I was really surprised at how incredibly well and professionally it got directed and the story got written, as if it all got done by some big Hollywood names involved, with years of experience in the business under their belt. Everything about this movie got basically done extremely well. Asian cinema is not often known to feature the fastest pace but this movie has a very pleasant quick pace to it and still manages to build up its characters and drama as powerful and effective as any other old and much slower Asian genre attempt. This is of course for most part due to the directing approach of Ki-young Kim, that is nothing short of brilliant to be honest. There are some amazingly well set up moments in the movie, that get brought beautifully and at times even artistically to the screen. But it's also due to the fine written story, by Ki-young Kim as well, that makes this movie such an extremely good one. It's a quite simple movie, in terms of that it doesn't feature that many characters in it and it is being set for most part at only two different locations; an house and a factory. What I foremost liked about the story was that all of the characters within it interact differently with each other and each of them have a different feeling and opinion about the other. It lets the story and all of its emotions and tension work out so very well. And this is all despite the fact that the movie just doesn't really have the most likely and convincing story in it. Or perhaps this is more due to the fact that's its about an entirely different culture, so all of the character motivations and their actions often seem like odd ones, through modern Western eyes. The movie is being a (melo)drama but with definitely a thriller overtone to it. The movie features some classic, effective genre elements, such as a great sense of claustrophobia, a constant sense of danger and unpredictability to it all, overall desperateness and even a femme fatale. It's also being a very well cast movie. Not only do all of the actors really let their characters work out well but they also all seem to have the right looks for their part. They are also all very distinctive looking, so you never have to worry about mixing one or two different South-Koreans up with each other, like perhaps sometimes is the case in other black & white Asian movies, in which all of the characters look alike with the same costumes and hairstyles. One surprisingly great movie, that got beautifully and fully restored by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation. 9/10

Polaris_DiB So this maid totally blackmails this man into sleeping with her, kills one of his children, and then incarcerates him and his wife in their own house, right? The moral of the story: apparently, the wife should have never wanted to own her own house, and all men when they grow older are pigs. YUP. Beautiful.Ki-young Kim's modern parable starts in with the social commentary right from the get-go, but after a while devolves into a nonsense horror movie where a completely insane woman holds an entire family hostage with their guilt and fear. None of the family members at any point have the guts to stand up for themselves, so for almost about two hours you get to see a murderer, narcissist, and blackmailer hold sway over weak people with no cajones with poison and threats of the police, while she kills off the family one-by-one.Not to say that the family is completely devoid of their own responsibility, but half the problem is that they won't just chop off her head with a shovel like the snake that she is. There's only so far I buy the "Oh noes, we'll lose our jobs and people won't respect us" after the body count begins. The main problem is that it's incredibly hard to have sympathy for these people. Pretty much nobody acts in any way to improve their situation, and all of them become subject to this woman's desires for happiness that are just impossibly met. It sucks worse because the movie takes place over a relatively long period of time, and you'd think these people'd think it through a bit. But instead it's all moping and shrinking while the maid just goes gradually insane.Not a very enjoyable movie. Shameless moralizing that is not backed up by the motivations OF the characters. Way too little common sense IN the characters. What interest you can get out of the film-making and the cinematography will be forgotten quickly in the painfulness of the plot. Best just to steer clear.--PolarisDiB