Woman of Fire
Kim Ki-young South Korea 1971 98 min M18 (Sexual Scenes)
A middle-class Korean family is shattered by desire after they hire a country girl to be their live-in housemaid.
Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung makes her silver screen debut as Myungja, a country girl fleeing her traumatic past to seek employment and marriage in the city. Her presence in the seemingly respectable middle-class household soon upends the lives of the couple who employs her. Unfazed by their city-dweller prejudices, she ingratiates herself with them, particularly the husband, but finds no sanctuary from the violence she had sought to escape.
Unapologetically expressionistic with frenetic sequences that evoke an unsettling salaciousness seething beneath the surface, this cult classic charts Myungja’s transformation from country girl to femme fatale, while savagely dissecting patriarchal familial structures.
Synopsis Writer: Gabriel Goh
Q&A with Filmmaker(s)
6 Dec, Sat 11:00AM / 98 min
Oldham Theatre
AT THE FEST!
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Woman of Fire
화녀
Kim Ki-young
South Korea
1971
Korean
English
98 min
M18 (Sexual Scenes)
Kim Ki-young
Kim Ki-young was a pioneering figure of Korean cinema known for his intense deconstruction of psychological and social dynamics through female characters. His 1960 cult masterpiece The Housemaid spawned two remakes, Woman of Fire (1971) and Woman of Fire ’82 (1982), forming a trilogy focused on the trope of the femme fatale infiltrating domestic spaces.
Namkoong Won,
Youn Yuh-jung,
Jeon Gye-hyeon,
Choi Moo-ryong
Jung Jin-woo
