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The Maid
Sebastián Silva’s new movie examines the effect of a lifetime of servitude on a Chilean domestic worker
Sebastián Silva set out to make a movie about the effect of a lifetime of servitude on a Chilean domestic worker. The result was an insightful and engaging film that asks its audience to ponder whether the demons that emerge from a years of seeking identification through subservience can ever be quelled.
The Maid stars Catalina Saavedra as the title character Raquel, a woman who has worked as a maid in the same middle–class household in Santiago, Chile for more than twenty years. The premise of the film lays in Pilar, the mother of the household opting to hire additional help in order to ease Raquel’s burden. The act, one as based in thoughtfulness as well as household management, is seen as a call to arms by Raquel whose sole purpose in life has been threatened. What follows is at times mad–cap comedy and at times psychological drama–both of which depend on Saavedra delivering what could be the performance of her career.
Silva produced The Maid on a shoestring budget using money saving production acts such as using his own family home for principal shooting. Silva’s innovation pays off, and the real beauty of the film is the filmmaker’s unflinching look at the practice of class division itself. The film is neither condemnation nor condolence, but rather unbiased human perspective. The Maid delivers on the most important element of all: humanity.
The Maid will be playing at The Coolidge Corner Theater on November 13th. For more information, please visit www.coolidge.org.