Good concept, poorly executed.

Dreadfully Boring

Am I Missing Something?

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The Maid (2009)In some ways this film is extraordinary. It's small, limited in its setting, and it has a slightly predictable inevitability. But it is so seeringly well acted and filmed with an honest small budget honesty, it's hard not to appreciate. It also deals with a huge issue in many countries--the use of household help, often now from other, poorer countries, and the ironies and sadness that goes with this class structure.Catalina Saavedra is "the maid" in this, and like the leading role in the even more astonishing "The Hedgehog" we get inside this person's modest and seemingly invisible persona to really get them, or part of them, for a brief spell. It's moving--it made me cry--and revealing. It's not like we don't know that live-in maids lead an unfair, often unhappy life (which they disguise from their employers). But we aren't often faced with it so plainly.This also is revealing about the standard of living in Chile, which is one of the two or three South American countries fully above the "third world" status you might think at first. The fact it did so well in the United States (earning half a million dollars) is not because it was a glimpse of a foreign impoverished country, but because it resembled so well the situation in American households. Those with maids.See this? Yes, certainly. It has a simple cinema-verite style, not quite home movies but shot almost entirely inside the house in a shaky camera. The plot might not be enough for some viewers--after awhile it is what it is without a lot of complications. Or at least not complications we haven't seen before. What carries it is the sincerity of the performances, especially Saavedra's.

The Maid, or La Nana is a Chilean film that is hard to categorize. Raquel has served an upper class Chilean family for over twenty years, and when she becomes overwhelmed by the demands of the household, they hire another woman to help with the chores. Through a sequence of different pranks, which includes locking the helper out of the house, the assistant quits. It turns out that Raquel is territorial, and possessive of her employers. The next prospect, an older, tougher woman is more difficult to intimidate, but the maid in charge manages to also make life unbearable for her and she gives up and leaves. Raquel believes that she is part of the family because of her many years of living with them and they, in turn, feel obligated to to take care of her. The lead actress, Catalina Saavedra, is a plump, plain looking woman who will alternately make you feel sorry for her at one moment and then want someone to do the right thing and lock up this mentally unstable creature. She is outstanding and had me convinced that she is really nuts. Both funny and sad, The Maid is an excellent movie.

If you enjoy family soap opera and dysfunction, as well as the chance to peep at women as they shower, this is the movie for you.Here we have the story of an attractive, privileged couple somewhere in South America, along with their squabbling children, and the series of maids who put up with them.The main nanny is Raquel, an angry and depressed woman of uncertain intelligence who has sacrificed 20 years to this clan with nothing to show for it but a cramped bedroom and a deplorable attitude.When the stress begins to get to Raquel, the woman of the house decides to get her some help. Raquel proceeds to act out almost psychopathically until one of the maids pummels her and another tries friendship.A little concern and support go a long way with Raquel and she seems to be regaining her grip by the end of the film. I didn't find this story to be that compelling, though it did keep my interest till the end.As hinted above, I resent the filmmaker's gratuitous inclusion of a breast-revealing shower shot of nearly every female in the film. He may be a voyeur; I prefer not to be.

All I knew was that it was a story about a live-in housekeeper/nanny who did not look too happy in the poster image. I also knew that things are complicated when you have help in the household because I am from India where part-time and full-time help are as common as a common sparrow - you notice it only when it makes too much noise. In the very first scene, Raquel, the maid, looks up from her plate at the kitchen table: her perch, her cage, her refuge. She looks straight at the camera and the spectators find themselves being stared down. Raquel seemed to be saying, "you watch, I'll show you what I can do!" and, "welcome to my life, ever see it from this side?" and because she was in uniform, she seemed to be speaking for all maids all over the world, "it's not funny!" I loved that moment. It spoke volumes. After more than two decades of her most youthful years used up cleaning after the kids, cooking, serving, and staying out of the way yet available when needed, Raquel is spent. Her symptoms include bad headaches, spells of dizziness and a perpetual glowering, smoldering expression, passive-aggressive to say the least. The feverish camera movements are synchronized perfectly with Raquel's perspective and Silva's intentions: to make us appreciate her perspective, the ascent and descent of her everyday life. Rising every morning before everyone else, showering, preparing breakfast and snacks for the kids, sending them to school, serving coffee in bed to her masters, vacuuming, scrubbing, laundering, popping pills as she goes along, and then one day finally falling down the stairs in a fainting spell. It had to be that or I was sure she was going to kill someone. If looks could kill, hers surely would have. Driven by the fear (anger and hurt, really) of losing her "family" spot or being "replaced" by a younger more energetic type, Raquel had started showing signs of abnormal and anti-social behavior. When the decision to hire a new maid is finally announced, it is received as nothing less than a declaration of war. It's betrayal, blackball, and banishment, and since Raquel apparently has no where else to go, she fights for what she believes is hers alone. Locking the new maids out of the house, using liberal doses of sarcasm, hiding food from the kids, scrubbing bathtubs with Clorox each time the new maids shower in it… even getting rid of the new kitten who would seemed to be threatening to take her place in receiving whatever little love and affection she gets from the kids. Silva never lets us decide who is going to win.The first additional help hired is a young Peruvian girl who probably symbolizes the current reality in big cities such as Santiago where many Peruvians work as housemaids. Sarcasm directed at the new arrival highlights the intercultural tension present just below the surface of things: "So, you're obviously going to feed Peruvian fare to the family!" This continues for a while until, of course, the good-natured Lucy shows up, and, little by little, wins Raquel's friendship and heart, and provides the opportunity for a dignified exit to all concerned. Sebastián Silva managed to make me laugh about a dark subject by capturing the human elements out of a sea of depressing and gloomy facts: an unorganized, unaccounted for, underpaid, overworked, silent, oft-abused and more-oft simply ignored group of workers. The dark uniform with white collar and front plastic zipper is a great touch. It helps eliminate any tell-tale signs of the life and context of the donner and provides an even and nameless exterior soothing any guilt the employer might harbor. I kept shifting in my seat trying to get comfortable and realized later that perhaps my unease had to do with the fact that Silva reminded me about how socio-economic differences and race play themselves out in reality, about how people are most comfortable within the circle of their own class (when Lucy takes Raquel home to spend Christmas together), how class differences alienate and isolate, and how they are simply there, that's all there is to it. These days, most middle- class families that hire domestic help get part-time help to cook, clean, do laundry and dusting so that the masters can go to work and not have to worry about it all when they get home tired after a day's work. Many Westerners would be less able to relate to this film for lack of experience in this area. Many others would. For it's not just in countries like Chile and India that there is domestic help. We have it here in the US as well. Raquel, being a live- in maid, though, complicates matters a lot. A live-in maid suggests that she is working for a wealthier family who can afford to have someone provide a gentle wake-up call in the morning with coffee in bed. Raquel does not go home to a family (remember the heart- wrenching scene when she cries uncontrollably while talking to her mother we never see), she does not have a life of her own or hobbies to pursue during her time off, and she does not know how to (cannot) get herself out of it. While Raquel is considered "family" by her employers — Pilar certainly makes an effort to treat her with kindness and concern — the subtitle of the movie reads "she's more or less family." In that euphemism resides, in my humble opinion, the core of this dark comedy. After the film, as we were walking back to the parking garage on 2nd street, Katharine remarked (I paraphrase), "you know, I read somewhere that after the film was made, the director's real maid saw it and took off, deciding to get a (new) life!" For this 30-year old director the film has earned a lot of fame, and for his maids, it has earned freedom,