The Maid 2009Genres: Art/Foreign and Drama
Running Time: 1 hr. 35 min.
Release Date: October 16th, 2009 (limited)
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Distributors: Elephant Eye Films
Starring: Mariana Loyola, Alejandro Goic, Catalina Saavedra, Andrea Garcia Huidobro, Claudia Celedon
Directed by: Sebastian Silva
Produced by: Gregorio Gonzalez, Sebastian Silva, Gregorio Gonzalez
Review
Raquel has served as the live-in maid for the Valdes family for 23 years. Neither truly a member of the family nor simply a servant, she inhabits an undefined space somewhere in between. Threatened when the family decides to bring on extra help, she engages in a series of increasingly frantic acts to hold on to her position.
After 23 years working as housemaid in an upper class Santiago, Chile household, Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) is as much a part of the Valdez family as the wife, husband, and kids she lives with and looks after. On the occasion of Raquel’s 41st birthday Pilar Valdez (Claudia Celedon), her husband Mundo (Alejandro Goic) and their oldest son Lucas (Agustin Silva) force the sullen, withdrawn maid to emerge from her kitchen sanctum and join the family for a brief celebration at the close of dinner. But Raquel’s discomfort is as strong as her “family’s” need to acknowledge their awkward dependence on her and she soon withdraws to her room.
Plagued by migraines and dizziness, Raquel nevertheless devotes herself to her domestic responsibilities and to a complex series of relationships with the individual family members she serves. For insecure Pilar the maid has become the de facto head of the household. For teenage Lucas Raquel has transformed from surrogate mother to crush-object. For daughter Camila, (Andrea Garcia-Huidobro) Raquel is a bitterly resented opponent in an ongoing and undeclared psyche war fought via noisy early morning vacuuming, ignored instructions, and constant complaints and accusations.
Over Raquel’s objections Pilar hires a second domestic to ease the workload and hopefully improve her beloved maid’s grim attitude and increasingly poor health. Young and pretty Peruvian au pair Mercedes (Mercedes Villanueva) is an instant success with the rest of the family, particularly Raquel’s nemesis Camila. But behind the scenes Raquel quietly and mercilessly torments her new co-worker and eventually her campaign of comically petty and unrelenting psychological abuse succeeds in driving Mercedes away. At her patrician mother’s suggestion, Pilar borrows longtime housemaid Sonia (Anita Reeves) who resists Raquel’s provocations more forcefully. Tensions between Sonia and Raquel escalate to the breaking point and when the two veteran maids come to blows and Mundo’s prized ship model is destroyed as they brawl, Sonia is dismissed.
Raquel’s victory is brief. She collapses while serving breakfast and grudgingly accepts a period of bed rest and convalescence. When Raquel returns to work she discovers that Lucy (Mariana Loyola), a cheerful new maid near her own age, has effectively taken Raquel’s place. Raquel’s household terror tactics prove no match for Lucy’s humor and resilience and as their trust and affection grows, lonely and jealous Raquel begins to transform. Lucy invites Raquel to spend Christmas with her rural farm family and for the first time in her life Raquel feels what it’s like to be truly treated as an equal. She even kindles romance with Lucy’s cousin.
Lucy’s deep emotional need to be with her own family keeps her from forming the same tangled relationships with the members of the Valdez household, she becomes increasingly disenchanted with domestic service and city living. As Raquel, grateful and more cheerful, sets out to organize a surprise birthday party for her new friend, Lucy announces that she has decided to go back to the farm. Will Raquel be able to sustain her dawning appreciation for life beyond the kitchen and continue to develop a positive new outlook.
Once this film kicks into gear, you can’t be blamed for wondering whether you’ll get a story influenced by Wes Craven (”Scream,” “Scream 2″) or Ken Loach (”My Name is Joe,” “Bread and Roses”). After all, the title character is often enraged enough to commit murder, but at the same time she stands in for writer-director’s exploration of class relationships-a good sign that “The Maid” follows the genre of social realism. Director Silva knows whereof he speaks since this largely autobiographical story that represents the relationship of a maid to her boss’s family could be, writ-small, a description of a semi-feudal system at work in Latin America. The story takes place in Santiago, Chile, though given the paucity of scenes outside the employer’s home, the action comes across with the claustrophobia of a staged creation. You won’t get to see much of greater Santiago and its distinct culture: interestingly, one Chilean angrily asks a Peruvian employee whether she will be cooking “Peruvian food.”
With that caveat in mind-though even more important on the negative side is the cheesy look and vertiginous movements of a hand-held digital camera-”The Maid” features a terrific performance by Catalina Saavedra as Raquel the maid, a woman who works so hard in her employee’s large, kid-filled house that she’s given to fainting spells and severe headaches.
Silva and his co-writer, Pedro Peirano, focus on the ambiguity of Raquel’s position in the home of Mundo (Alejandro Goic), his wife Pilar (Claudia Celedon), and an assortment of offspring of whom the liveliest and friendliest is Lucas (Agustin Silva)-an adolescent who has a fun time with Raquel thereby affording her the feeling that she is part of the family. But she is not. As one young ‘un states in anger, “You’re just a maid.” Raquel faces a permanent identity crisis by feeling, on the one hand, that her 23 years of service which includes raising the kids while their parents are out working merits her place as family, while on the other hand, she feels lonely, insecure, and defensive. When Pilar, citing the need to help Raquel by lightening her burden, brings in first a young, sweet Peruvian woman, Mercedes (Mercedes Villanueva), followed by an old battle-ax of a servant, Sonia (Anita Reeves), Raquel, paranoid with fear that her position is being marginalized, plays tricks on the two helpers. Both are locked out of the house until they give up and quit their jobs. Nobody, but nobody, is to take Raquel’s place making sandwiches for the kids, horsing around with Lucas, bringing Pilar breakfast in bed, and keeping the entire home clean and waxed
The action takes an about-face when a frustrated Pilar hires Lucy (Mariana Loyola), a free-spirited 30-something who sunbathes in the nude, laughs freely, and insists that she is not about to be a servant for the rest of her life. Director Silva convincingly, patiently demonstrates the way that one liberated person attaches to the wavelength of another, turning her friend around. The virginal maid who is inexperienced in the ways of the world is about to become a person in her own right.
Catalina Saavedra appears in virtually every frame, her mouth turned down, her eyes opening wide when angry or especially happy-handing us in the theater an incisive tale of a woman who works too hard, identifies too closely with her employer to have a “personhood” of her own, but who is redeemed in the closing moments. One wonders whether the happiness she finds is now mixed with a cautious regret of having spent over forty years dedicating herself too closely with others to have a life of her own.
