Woman of Fire (1971)

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.