The Maid

The Maid

95 Minutes

Say what you will about The Maid, the one thing you can’t say is that it’s predictable. At times, it feels like a dark comedy, and at others, a social realist drama. It even veers close to horror as the protagonist’s behavior grows more erratic and unhinged. You also can’t say that it isn’t genuine. Director and co-writer, Sebastián Silva based the film on his childhood maid and even shot it in his family home in Salvador, Chile. You just can’t fake that kind of detail.

The Maid opens with the upper-class Valdez family throwing a surprise birthday party for their live-in maid, Raquel (Catalina Saavedre). It may be Raquel’s birthday but she’s not very happy turning 41. Raquel has dedicated over half her life in service to the Valdez family, and it has taken its toll. Everything about her seems to droop, from her hunched over shoulders to her sagging body to her unkempt curly hair. If not for her permanent frown, she would have no signs of life. Raquel is more concerned about her impending chores and protecting her territory – the kitchen. It doesn’t take long before one of the children clashes with her over access to the fridge, forcing the pushover Valdez matriarch to hire another maid to alleviate Raquel’s workload. Raquel perceives this act of generosity as a hostile threat to her position and wages a passive-aggressive war against the intruder. The young new maid is no match, and Raquel has her quitting in tears. A replacement maid arrives in the form of a hardened veteran who scolds Raquel for being too close to the “ingrates.” She doesn’t take Raquel’s psychological warfare lying down and physically attacks Raquel before she too leaves the house. Mission accomplished.

But eventually Raquel succumbs to her migraine headache attacks and after one particularly nasty fainting spell, awakens to find herself confined to her bed. The new maid, Lucy, a free spirit with a predilection for early morning jogs and nude sunbathing, assures Raquel that she has no long term plans to work at the house. Not satisfied, Raquel rushes to get back on her feet, only to discover that her mind games won’t work on the new girl, who disarms her with an almost saintly empathy.

And this is when the story changes. We’re not only empathizing with Raquel, we’re rooting for her. That’s quite an impressive feat considering not long ago we cheered as Raquel took a beating from the other maid. Silva accomplishes this by shooting in an emotionally detached way. Initially, we are drawn to Raquel solely out of fascination of her erratic behavior. Our empathy actually lies more with the Valdez family and Raquel’s victims. But little by little, Silva plants details about Raquel’s life of drudgery – how the family closes the door on her so they can eat in private, how she has nothing to do on her days off, how her only contact with her family is with her mother’s voice over the phone – setting up our eventual change of heart.

Because The Maid’s darkly comic moments skewer bourgeoisie manners and hypocrisy, comparisons can be made to Luis Buñuel. However, Silva films in a gritty social realistic manner that undermines that tone. Much like the protagonist, the film isn’t pretty; although it was shot with HD cameras, it looks like it was shot with a consumer camcorder using available daylight. This accentuates the drabness of the characters, Raquel in particular, but never the gives a sense of the wealth of the Valdez family. Supposedly, the estate is so grand that it requires more than one maid to care for each floor, but it feels as claustrophobic as a one room apartment.

Thankfully, Silva eschews the didactic moralizing of films like Frozen River and Crash. Instead he focuses on the problems of a single maid and in doing so has a made a more powerful statement about the live-in maid phenomenon of Latin America. The film has stuck a chord in Chile even receiving a commendation from the president. The Maid works best as a character study owing largely to an excellent performance by Saavedre. The Chilean television veteran is bravely repellent, imbuing her character with a raw, unapologetic honesty. Her physical and emotional transformation from the beginning to the end of the film is absolutely amazing. It’s a performance that has not gone unnoticed garnering a special award from the World Cinema Jury at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and a nomination for Breakthrough Actor for this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards.

by James Shelledy