asabilal

After watching the masterpiece 'Tokyo Sonata', I was expecting a lot from this TV series directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. After watching 'Shokuzai', I think I was maybe expecting way too much.

I had the chance to see Shokuzai in theaters here in Belgium. For that occasion, they split the series in two parts: the first three chapters (240 min) and the last two (110 min). The first three chapters ('The French Doll', 'The Bear...' and 'The PTM...') were very good. I haven't even felt the need to take a look at my watch so 'absorbed' I was by the story. If I hadn't seen the rest of it, I'd give it 9 out of 10. But in the last two chapters, Kiyoshi Kurosawa lost me, and many other people in the audience.

The last two chapters focus on Emili's murder, and even though it's the main plot of the series, it was its less interesting part.

You'd better watch the original movie, 'The Housemaid' directed by Ki-Young Kim in 1960, which is one of the first and finest Korean movie I've seen so far. Compared to the original version, The Housemaid (2010) is really deceiving.

The first hour is OK, but then it gets really boring, even though the acting isn't that bad. It's just a pity that such good actors' talent was wasted (see Do-Yeon Jeon in 'Sunshine (2007)' and Jung-Jae Lee in 'New World (2013)').

Not to mention the ending, which reminded me Brian De Palma's 'The Fury', deceiving too.