The Maid (La Nana)

What reads like a cheapie slasher flick about a domestic servant with territory issues is actually a minutely observed chamber piece about class division and personal awakening. Making the most of his primary location (which happens to be his childhood home), Chilean director Sebastián Silva’s award winner is a steady and revealing climb inside the lonely and emotionally claustrophobic world of a live-in maid. But this slow descent of a middle-aged servant is no downer and will register strongly with those who need reminding that servitude, professional or otherwise, is a self-constructed prison with the key in one’s own pocket. Financial prospects are awfully slim, although its Dramatic World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance will bring in fest-heads.

From the starting gun, Silva and co-author Pedro Peirano establish a mood of intimacy and social realism as the Valdez family celebrates the 41st birthday of their maid, Raquel (Catalina Saavedra). Raquel has spent 23 years caring for the Valdez clan, serving breakfast in bed to wife Pilar (Claudia Celedón), retrieving the lost golf shirts of husband Mundo (Alejandro Goic) and packing lunches for the school-aged children. The family, especially Pilar, treats Raquel like one of their own. They seem genuine in their appreciation, but on this birthday, the artificiality of such an arrangement morphs and congeals until Raquel becomes a tight ball of fear and suspicion. Films about the upstairs-downstairs relationship between servants and masters are older than, well, Upstairs Downstairs. But The Maid avoids the distance and tweeness that marks some of those efforts. Much of this tougher-minded feel comes from a lead performance that never asks for sympathy so, by the end, we’re more likely to grant it. With her thin, down-turned mouth and eyes bulging with paranoia, Saavedra gives a performance so natural we forget how bold it actually is. Raquel is a tragically empty soul given to acting out, especially when a second maid is brought in to help with the family burden. Indeed, Raquel is so threatened by young, Peruvian Mercedes (Mercedes Villanueva) that she disinfects the shower immediately after Mercedes uses it and, later, she locks the interloper out of house. Raquel pulls the same trick when Mercedes quits and a second, more ornery and take-charge servant is brought in. It’s childish and pathetic behavior any way you slice it, but Silva positions these episodes as lightly comedic, which never feels out of place with the established tone. It only undercuts the very real sense of family dynamics shaking and shifting.

Otherwise, Silva’s sophomore effort gets the details right, from Raquel’s bedroom, bereft of personal affects, to the loud and passive-aggressive vacuuming that wakes up the daughters. But the macro view is that Raquel has spent over two decades assuming an equal place within the family that the family has not bestowed upon her. Under this roof, the most cutting remark is “you’re just the maid.” Raquel’s refusal to cede any of her turf to the other domestics, despite a workload that causes fainting spells, is a misguided attempt to hold on to what defines her. But she’s too spun out of orbit to realize that what defines her is a self-perpetuated lie. Silva, though, doesn’t throw in the towel. When Raquel locks free-spirited servant Lucy (Mariana Loyola) out of the house, Lucy’s response demonstrates a more individualistic and constructive coping mechanism. And it also shows that Silva, who based on the story on his own childhood experience with a domestic servant, sees the film not as a societal finger-wag but as a wake-up call for a class of Chileans traditionally treated like slaves.

The Maid is not a 360 assessment of the relationship between master and servant. It’s not meant to be. Boosted by Sergio Armstrong’s drifting, voyeuristic camera and Danielle Fillios’ tight editing, this is an exacting study of a woman whose devotion to her employers prevents her from forming any sense of identity apart from the family for whom she works.

Distributor: Elephant Eye Films
Cast: Catalina Saavedra, Claudia Celedón, Mariana Loyola, Alejandro Goic
Director: Sebastián Silva
Screenwriters: Sebastián Silva & Pedro Peirano
Producers: Gregorio Gonzalez
Genre: Dramedy; Spanish-language, subtitled
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 95 min.
Release date: October 16 ltd.