It's just so hard to find good help these days. Just ask the Valdes family, whose live-in maid of twenty-three years is quickly becoming a veritable case-study in passive-aggressive behavior.
Forty years old, with no boyfriend, husband or children of her own, Raquel (the award-winning Catalina Saavedra) clings to her life with the Valdes with all the tenacity of a drowning sailor holding onto a rope. Whenever the family tries to hire someone to help her with her work, Raquel goes after the interloper with an understated viciousness bordering on psychosis. This is her territory, and she isn't about to yield a single inch of it if she can at all help it.
Sebastian Silva's Chilean feature "The Maid" could easily have devolved into a class-war screed, with Raquel as the representation of the downtrodden working classes and the Valdes family the embodiment of the unfeeling social elite exploiting those workers. Instead, we get a much more nuanced and subtle look at the gulf that separates the haves from the have-nots in society. For Raquel is hardly an inherently noble figure, what with her petulance, her petty jealousies and her callousness towards those she feels are a threat to her. Similarly, the Valdes's appear to be genuinely nice people (especially the mother, well played by Claudia Celedon) who go the extra mile to make Raquel's life a comfortable one and try to make her feel like a member of their family. The problem is that Raquel has become too dependent on this extended family for her own happiness (we only ever see her talking on the phone to her actual mother). Indeed, it takes another maid (Mariana Loyola) - a free-spirited young Peruvian who takes her job seriously but doesn't allow it to define who she is - to finally break through Raquel's emotional armor, which is the first step in Raquel's beginning to loosen up and concentrate on cultivating her own identity and happiness for a change. We sense in the end that this journey to self-awareness is going to be a long and arduous one for Raquel, but the movie leaves us sensing she is more likely than not going to complete that journey.
Silva has directed the film in a totally naturalistic style, making us feel as if we are eavesdropping on the day-to-day life of this household. There's even a bit of dark humor in its depiction of the "maid wars" to go along with all the emotional sturm-und-drang and domestic conflict.
Though there isn't a weak acting job among the lot of them, it is Saavedra's tour-de-force performance as Raquel that truly stands out. Shy and self-effacing one moment, she is sly and aggressive the next, and Saavedra never lets us see the mechanics of the transitions. It is a seamless piece of work that merited the many accolades it received in festivals around the world.
Forty years old, with no boyfriend, husband or children of her own, Raquel (the award-winning Catalina Saavedra) clings to her life with the Valdes with all the tenacity of a drowning sailor holding onto a rope. Whenever the family tries to hire someone to help her with her work, Raquel goes after the interloper with an understated viciousness bordering on psychosis. This is her territory, and she isn't about to yield a single inch of it if she can at all help it.
Sebastian Silva's Chilean feature "The Maid" could easily have devolved into a class-war screed, with Raquel as the representation of the downtrodden working classes and the Valdes family the embodiment of the unfeeling social elite exploiting those workers. Instead, we get a much more nuanced and subtle look at the gulf that separates the haves from the have-nots in society. For Raquel is hardly an inherently noble figure, what with her petulance, her petty jealousies and her callousness towards those she feels are a threat to her. Similarly, the Valdes's appear to be genuinely nice people (especially the mother, well played by Claudia Celedon) who go the extra mile to make Raquel's life a comfortable one and try to make her feel like a member of their family. The problem is that Raquel has become too dependent on this extended family for her own happiness (we only ever see her talking on the phone to her actual mother). Indeed, it takes another maid (Mariana Loyola) - a free-spirited young Peruvian who takes her job seriously but doesn't allow it to define who she is - to finally break through Raquel's emotional armor, which is the first step in Raquel's beginning to loosen up and concentrate on cultivating her own identity and happiness for a change. We sense in the end that this journey to self-awareness is going to be a long and arduous one for Raquel, but the movie leaves us sensing she is more likely than not going to complete that journey.
Silva has directed the film in a totally naturalistic style, making us feel as if we are eavesdropping on the day-to-day life of this household. There's even a bit of dark humor in its depiction of the "maid wars" to go along with all the emotional sturm-und-drang and domestic conflict.
Though there isn't a weak acting job among the lot of them, it is Saavedra's tour-de-force performance as Raquel that truly stands out. Shy and self-effacing one moment, she is sly and aggressive the next, and Saavedra never lets us see the mechanics of the transitions. It is a seamless piece of work that merited the many accolades it received in festivals around the world.