No, I did not review Eclipse this weekend. If you’re a fan of The Twilight Saga, you’re going to watch Eclipse regardless of what my review says.  So today there’s something a little different for your attention.

The Maid Review

Director: Sebastián Silva Screenplay: Pedro Peirano, Sebastián Silva Cast: Catalina Saavedra, Claudia Celedón, Mariana Loyola, Agustín Silva Time: 95min Age Restriction: 16SNL

Genre:
Dramedy

Summary Review:
The Maid is an award-winning Chilean film about the dangers of isolation and living your life through the achievements of others.

Synopsis:
Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) has been a maid for the Valdes family for 20 years. Although it would seem as though she is part of the family, in reality there has always been the differentiation between the employers and their help.

As a consequence of this emotional exclusion, Raquel has become a rigid and mean-spirited sort of robot, who has buried all the hopes and dreams of her youth. So she works, never changing her facial expression or conversing about anything that does not have to do with her direct duties and responsibilities as a maid.

Raquel no longer puts much effort into her appearance, wearing her uniform as a suit of armour; and she has suppressed the desires for her own family by regarding the Valdes children as her own.

As she gets older, however, the burden of working for such a large family and its huge house becomes too much for Raquel to manage and Mrs. Valdes (Claudia Celedón) hires a series of maids to assist her. But Raquel sees this as a personal insult and makes it unbearable for the new maids to cope.

That is, until Lucy arrives – a secure and compassionate girl whose warmth thaws Raquel’s frozen humanity and brings her back to life.

The Maid is a touching, but hard, look at the dangers of loneliness and suppressing one’s personality, along with the dreams and desires of the heart.

Despite its roughness, The Maid is also filled with a wry, sardonic sense of humour that makes it a rueful pleasure to watch.

Special Note:

I love watching foreign-language films, because they are usually so different from what we’re used to seeing. The filmmakers’ perspective are fully original, the structure and flow of the films are so creative and the stories are fascinating.

If you’ve never watched a foreign-language film before, try out The Maid or give yourself a treat and watch Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film starring Penélope Cruz, to see how exotic and complex these films really can be.