[Lee Jong-gil's Film Reading] Actress Youn Yeo-jeong's Beginning... The Maid 'Myeong-ja' Embracing the Era's Desire

Director Kim Ki-young's Film 'Hwanyeo' Re-released After 50 Years... Fascination and Disillusionment with Modernity
Class Conflict Portrayed as a Deadly Power Struggle... Youn Yuh-jung's Free-Spirited Energy Shines

"I want to dedicate this award to my first director, Kim Ki-young (1919?1998)." This was actress Youn Yuh-jung's (74) acceptance speech for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her film debut was in ‘Hwanyeo (The Housemaid, 1971),’ which will be re-released on the 1st of next month. Director Kim Ki-young remade his 1960 film ‘Hanyeo (The Housemaid)’ to fit the 1970s context. He also revisited the same story in 1982 with ‘Hwanyeo 82,’ reflecting on the changes in Korean society every decade and the crisis faced by middle-class families.

Before appearing in ‘Hwanyeo,’ Youn Yuh-jung was an unknown actress. Director Kim cast her as the lead after seeing her play a high school girl gangster in the MBC drama ‘Dongducheon Baekbaji.’ In an interview during his lifetime, he said, "I don’t choose actors based on their looks but find those who fit the role in my work. Usually, that leads to success."

"An actress like Kim Ji-mi, who was cast in ‘Hwanghon Yeolcha (Twilight Train, 1957),’ when she suffers in the story, it creates a reverse effect. ‘If such a beautiful woman suffers because of men, what about ordinary women like us?’ Actresses who look like ordinary women are the best. Being pretty is not important."

The foundation of ‘Hwanyeo’ is based on the Geumchon murder case, where a maid drowned her employer’s child in a reservoir. Director Kim did not simply portray it as a story of a family collapsing because of a woman. Instead, he depicted it as a deadly power struggle between a middle-class couple obsessed with Western consumerism and a lower-class woman dreaming of social mobility through sexual temptation. Using fetishistic mise-en-sc?ne elements like antique clocks and stained glass, he pointed to both fascination and disillusionment with modernity.

The maid Myeong-ja, played by Youn Yuh-jung, is neither individualistic nor realistic. Rather, she is archetypal and symbolic. This relates to the film’s characteristic of having many lines that define something. The characters all embody hierarchical elements extracted from reality. "If men could give birth, they would probably be so scared that most would commit suicide." "That’s true. Men are cowards."

Myeong-ja’s desire for social advancement is often expressed on the staircase connecting the first and second floors. Since fulfillment comes at a cost, it is effectively a space of death. The Korean Film Archive’s 2007 book ‘Jeonseol-ui Nagin (The Stigma of Legend)’ explains it as follows:

"This place, which desires social ascent and evokes the fear of downfall, is dark and gloomy. If desire is in full color, punishment is black. This place, where innocent children fall and mysterious intruders die, is also the sacred site of Kim Ki-young’s vertical-structured narrative where one class perishes alongside another."

At first glance, Myeong-ja seems like a monster threatening the order of a middle-class family. However, the fear depicted in ‘Hwanyeo’ mainly erupts from the patriarch’s downfall and the resulting family crisis. It surfaces due to the intruder but was already shaken by elements growing from within.

Director Kim captures the pathological symptoms of Korean society and its people. Among various expressions, the most prominent is Youn Yuh-jung’s free-spirited energy. She comically grabs a mouse tail and shakes it in front of the homeowner Jeong-sook (Jeon Gye-hyeon). "This can also become chicken feed, right? Because it’s animal matter." "Hey, get that away. Aren’t you scared?" "During the village’s mouse-catching week, I set poison and caught eighty mice, winning a prize."

The hidden madness behind this pushes men into the perilous depths of desire. If the driving force behind this is the society’s unstable normality, then one can only cheer. Perhaps this is why Director Kim made the ‘Housemaid’ series.

"When men stab a woman’s chest with a knife a few times, they all become devils seeking revenge. (...) Women live freely and stylishly for twenty years after their husbands die, but men don’t live more than two years after their wives die. Even if they live, they just make loud noises but are basically dead already."