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Sorry, The Housemaid, but a feminist masterpiece you are not. And, kind of annoyingly, it seems pretty proud of the fact that it has totally nailed the whole girl power feminism thing, too.
Based on the cult novel by Freida McFadden, The Housemaid is fairly predictable girl-falls-into-rich-family-with-secrets thriller fare. Sydney Sweeney plays Millie, a girl on parole desperate for a job, who is thrilled to be hired as a live-in maid with the wealthy Winchesters. Amanda Seyfried plays Nina, the beautiful, pearl-laden and, seemingly, unstable wife, while Brandon Sklenar is the handsome, very muscly husband Andrew. The long-suffering Andrew, Millie learns, has been patiently managing his wife's apparent psychosis and all that comes with it: angry tirades, emotional breakdowns, even occasional violent outbursts.
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Millie soon finds herself fantasising about the “saintly” Andrew. If only she were lady of the house! She would be the wife he deserves! And she would have access to those bulging biceps! How unfair! Well, wouldn't you know it, when Nina is out of town, one thing leads to another and it turns out Andrew is into her, too. And so commences an affair, which quickly turns into Andrew ordering the unstable Nina out of the house.
So far, not so feminist, right? What, so Millie needs a big strong man to save her? So Nina is cast out of her home because she's a hysterical woman? And we are meant to celebrate it? Whatever happened to sisterhood??
And here comes The Twist – The Twist that turns everything on its head and, the film seems to think, absolves it of any anti-feminist critique. (Please look away now if you don't want to be spoiled.)
After Millie breaks Andrew's mother's precious china, he locks her in the windowless attic room. Flashback to the real story of Andrew and Nina's relationship: turns out, he was locking her in the attic, too, forcing her to “learn from her mistakes” by performing a series of horrific tasks. The first was to pull out one hundred hairs from her head after she forgot to dye her hair.
Back in the present, Andrew asks Millie to carve 20 marks into her stomach for every piece of broken china before he'll let her out.
But Millie is no wilting flower (she's been to real-life prison, people!) and she (with a little help from Nina, who is suddenly her bestie, apparently, because, sisterhood) takes Andrew down once and for all. The toxic man meets his comeuppance! The gals are free! Cue a Spice Girls song and general celebrations all around!
That's super feminist, right? Well, unfortunately, I'm not convinced. While The Housemaid seems to think it's a natural successor to feminist revenge thrillers like Gone Girl and Promising Young Woman, it lacks their nuance, charisma and human touch.
First, there's the fact that pretty much all of the female characters feel more like caricatures than actual humans. Millie is a gormless, blank canvas of a character, not helped by Sweeney's flat, not-quite-human line delivery. Trying to describe any actual traits that define her character is impossible. Then there's Nina. Seyfried gives it her all, but she has no real option but to go from mad woman stereotype to ballsy girl power heroine without much room for human realism in between. Then there are Nina's “friends,” a troop of one-dimension sneering, gossiping society women. And in a film that is supposedly so feminist, it's telling that all of the women are arguably objects of the male gaze.
There's also the fact that the film seems to assume that all women want is a man to save them. The problem, the film implies, isn't the male saviour fantasy that both Nina and Millie seem to live by – it's that all men apparently suck and are toxic pieces of shit! Once the girls realise how much all men suck, they are primed for some girl power fun! But where is the nuance and modern thinking in this? Getting saved by a man would be great! If only the men were better! And that's a disappointing stance to take.
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The entire premise of this girl power-fuelled revenge tale is flawed. After all, many women no longer relate to the fantasy of a man saving them. And most modern women don't enter into relationships with men because they represent an escape from their difficult lives. They fall for them because of who they are as people. Unfortunately, this film doesn't feature any recognisable humans, just ideas of them, so any kind of nuanced relationship is off the cards. The final button of the film, which I won't spoil, really hits home the black and white, and, frankly, boring gender politics of the film.
I wish this film had bothered to explore the problems with the male saviour fantasy; to explore whether women actually still buy into at all; to delve into any moral grey areas whatsoever rather than painting men as villains and women as nothing but blonde vessels for revenge. But it didn't. And, yes, it is, admittedly, kind of fun. Yes, you'll chuckle at the ludicrous lines and gasp your way through the ridiculous third act. Yes, it's worth seeing just for the fun of it. But a feminist masterpiece it most certainly is not.
The Housemaid is in cinemas from 26 December.
