For my last birthday I decided to embark on a new movie watching challenge (similar to ones I’ve done before here and here). This year’s challenge is to do four streams of films, and watch one of each stream in each month. On top of that, we’ll have six “wild card” slots through out the year, to bring it up to 54th movies for my 54th year (I just turned 53). You can read more about the plan here. This is post #43.
Spoilers Ahead
La Nana [The Maid] (2009)
Directed by: Sebastián Silva
Viewing Stream: International Movies
Country of Origin: Chile
Sometimes my choices for these projects is based on just what is easy to find, and what is not too long. That was the case here with this film that I found on a list online.
What it is about: Raquel is a long-term live-in maid for the Valdes family. When the family tries to hire other workers to help her, she jealously guards her position and does what she can to get rid of the people she seems as competition. One younger maid, Lucy, is able to break through her defences.
Starring Catalina Saavedra as Raquel. Key members of the Valdes family are played by Claudia Celedón (Pilar, the mother), Alejandro Goic (Edmundo, the father), Andrea García-Huidobro as Camila (the teen daughter) and Agustin Silva (as Lucas, the teen son). Mariana Loyola plays Lucy, while other maids who are driven out are played by Anita Reeves and Mercedes Villanueva.
My Thoughts: The Maid is a perhaps more of a character study than it is an actual plot–at least that is where the film really focuses its effort. We spend a lot of time getting to know something about Raquel’s life–she’s worked as a live-in maid for many years, and while she has loved the family’s children, she’s failed to do anything else with her life. And as the kids have become teenagers, her relationship with them has gone through strains. It’s a little like what parents experience with their kids, but without the benefit of the actual family bonds to pull people back together. Added to that are overtones of the permanent class differences that Raquel experiences with the family–the movie starts with the family celebrating her birthday, and we see her turn down the offer to not wash the dishes right away because she’ll just have to do it later. It highlights the fact that even if they show her kindness, she is still a servant, and not actually part of the family.
All of this results in a woman who is listless and board, but deeply insecure. Catalina Saavedra does a great job with the character, delivering a permanently fatigued expression with penetrates the surface of the character and gives us a glimpse of a soul that’s in a kind of self-imposed exile from life.
Into this routine life comes the efforts of the family to add another maid to the household–an idea that Pilar, wife of the household, claims is to provide relief for Raquel, but which Raquel interprets as a way to usurp her. In response to this, Raquel does everything she can to make life a living hell for these newcomers, thus finally giving the movie some actual action to watch play out, maybe about a third of the way through the runtime.
First up is the young and inexperienced Mercedes, a Peruvian immigrant whom Raquel drives out through emotional torture, including locking her out of the house and getting rid of the family cat that she is meant to be looking after.
After Mercedes quits, she is replaced by Sonia, an older and battle-weary woman who has been in the service of the family grandmother. When Raquel locks her out, she fights back by climbing over the fence and though an upstairs window, leading to a physical fight which damages a precious model that Edmundo (the father) has been working on for years. Sonia quits in anger and the family, out of fear of Edmundo’s reaction, cover up what has happened.
But then Raquel gets sick and while she is recuperating, Lucy enters the picture. Lucy is also inexperienced, but not so insecure, and sees Raquel as someone to pity and care for (and not just to battle). Thus when Raquel locks her out, she responds by stripping her clothes off and sunbathing naked in the front yard, an act which is so surprising to Raquel that it sends her into hysterics, breaking the ice between the women and leading to an enduring friendship.
The rest of the movie unpacks that friendship, including a trip Raquel takes to visit Lucy’s family, which leads to a near-love affair with Lucy’s uncle. During that visit, Lucy realises that the life of a maid is not for her, and she ends up going home. Raquel misses her friend, but we see that she has been inspired by the relationship and begins to exercise and look after herself, indicating a renewed enthusiasm for life.
I mention all this because this is almost everything that happens in the film. There is no other plot or particular tension to be resolved or to see play out. Thus the success of the movie hinges almost entirely on Saavedra’s performance and one’s tolerance for a slow exploration of one woman’s general malaise. For my part, I ultimately liked the movie, and appreciated the way I was able to get to know these characters. But if I wasn’t watching The Maid as part of my particular movie-viewing challenge, I probably wouldn’t have made it past the first few minutes. Of course, that’s part of the whole point of giving myself these challenges, so in that case it was generally a success on all points.
There was a bunch of (mostly) non-sexual nudity in the movie–people showering, etc–which is not my cup of tea. I guess in some ways it highlighted Raquel’s lack of dignity in her life, but generally it felt superfluous. Still, it didn’t keep me from appreciating the movie itself.
Check out the Masterlist here.
Blue Towel Productions 