The Maid: When Cleaning Ladies Attack

There’s been some studiously arty,
wannabe-Euro cinema coming out of Latin America recently, so The
Maid comes as a pleasant surprise. A sharp, acidly funny black
comedy from Chile, Sebastián Silva’s movie is about Raquel, a
live-in housekeeper for a Santiago family who becomes a raging
passive-aggressive sociopath when her employers bring in extra help.
With her troll-like physique, lipless grimace, and frumpy curls,
Catalina Saavedra’s ferociously territorial cleaning lady is an
indelible creation—pathetic and vindictive, but never entirely
ridiculous. The upper-class family that single, childless Raquel works
for—frazzled parents and teasingly entitled children roaming
about their spacious, tasteful house—is the only structure she
has ever known; we understand why she unravels when her role is
threatened, even as we giggle at what a psycho she becomes.

Silva shot The Maid in his parents’ home, and the precision
of autobiography is felt in the uneasy push-and-pull of affection,
intimacy, resentment, and guilt that colors the upstairs-downstairs
relations on-screen. What might have been a condescending social-issue
drama about oppressed servants or a shrill send-up of the ruling class
instead becomes a carefully etched character study that navigates an
impressive series of tonal shifts. Starting out as a handheld-driven
observation piece, The Maid gradually takes on farcical and
thrillerlike rhythms as Raquel methodically sabotages her new
assistants. We expect her to go apeshit and bash everyone’s heads in
with her vacuum or poison them with bleach. But Silva has something
else up his sleeve: In the film’s final act, a disarmingly smiley,
effortlessly modern housekeeper shows up with her iPod and jogging
clothes, and the story gravitates toward awkward and revealing new
emotions. The film—like its intriguing weirdo of a
heroine—is, up until then, so tightly controlled that it’s a
relief when it discovers how to let go.