Review: THE MAID

LA NANA, or THE MAID here in the US, is a Chilean film from writer-director Sebastian Silva that tells the story of a maid named Raquel. Long employed by a wealthy family, Raquel has spent nearly half of her 42 years caring for this family’s house and practically raising the three children. On the surface, Raquel seems to be a normal, albeit tired, working class woman who takes her job seriously. What we quickly discover is that Raquel has some underlying emotions that begin to erupt, creating some havoc in the household she keeps.

Catalina Saavedra, best known prior to this film for her role as a maid in a Chilean soap opera, delivers a performance that is equally disturbing as it is touching. Raquel is a woman tormented by something, but the film never fully reveals what that “something” is in her life that is making her miserable. In fact, there are several elements in the story that are left somewhat unexplained. The tricky and otherwise ingenious thing about this is that it works in creating a mystery around Raquel that the audience will find themselves thinking about throughout the movie.

Raquel loves the children, so much so that she believes herself to be part of the family. Not unlike many families, she does have a favorite in Lucas, the older of two boys, and finds herself in constant quarrel with the daughter Camila, who doesn’t understand why Raquel has something against her. Consequently, the audience is never given any reason to understand wither, but it’s the fact that Raquel is such an odd duck that allows much of this bewildering confusion of hers make sense.

Sensing that Raquel’s two decades of service to the family is beginning to take a physical toll, the matriarch Pilar suggests hiring another maid to assist her with the heavy load of chores. Raquel politely discourages this notion at first, but when Pilar finally follows through, a series of near-psychotic antics are employed by the territorial Raquel to ensure her family remains hers. She fears losing them to a new maid, a key plot device that opens up a can of worms regarding the completely untouched question of who her real family is and what in the world has happened in her past to make her so neurotic.

THE MAID is not a flashy film. Visually, the movie is something of a cross between reality TV and a soap opera, as is the progression of the story. The writing is low key, realistic and contains frequent scenes that feel almost voyeuristic. Given the lack of an MPAA rating for it’s US release, I expected more controversy from the story, but aside from some mild and casual nudity, this film is barely deserving of an R-rating, even for language. With that said, the very lack of anything intentionally controversial is partially what makes THE MAID believable.

One way to describe THE MAID would be to call it “battle of the maids” except that this would give it a comical implication, which couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a straight-up drama, depicting the manic mood swings and troubled emotions of a woman who has devoted much of her life to another family, while her own seems peculiarly distant and mysterious. Saavedra captures these extreme shifts in Raquel’s personality, from being gentle and caring one moment to being cold, harsh and at times even a little cruel, both the Camila and especially the other maids. That is, until she meets Lucy and everything begins to change.

For a film that has received some relatively positive buzz in the festival circuit, THE MAID isn’t quite what one might expect going into the theater. It is very likely that the film will fail to grab many people at first, but over the 95-minute running time, the film begins to grow on the viewer, gradually planting one little seed after another, forcing the audience to ask questions. THE MAID effectively procures that dangerous curiosity that may figuratively, and literally, kill the cat… but, never truly let’s the cat out of the bag.