The Maid (2009)
(La nana)
Country: CHI/MEX
Technical: col 95m
Director: Sebastián Silva
Cast: Catalina Saavedra, Claudia Celedón, Mariana Loyola
Synopsis:
A middle-class Chilean family's efforts to do something for their maid of twenty years' standing, Raquel, who is showing worrying signs of strain verging on monomania, fall disastrously wide of the mark. Until, that is, they employ Lucy to help out, whereupon Raquel becomes only too aware of her isolation from family and friends.
Review:
How one takes this Dogme-style study of institutionalised autism might depend very much on one's mood at the time: on the one hand, Raquel's extreme and repetitive victimisation of her co-workers and passive-aggressive tyranny over her employers can be a source of comedy; but then there is the camera's own dogged adherence to the protagonist's routine existence, which tends to produce an identification with her lot, if not her clearly distressed behavioural response to it. Lucy's instinctive reaction of love and physical contact come as a breath of fresh air, and a moving moment in this deliberate and thought-provoking movie.
(La nana)
Country: CHI/MEX
Technical: col 95m
Director: Sebastián Silva
Cast: Catalina Saavedra, Claudia Celedón, Mariana Loyola
Synopsis:
A middle-class Chilean family's efforts to do something for their maid of twenty years' standing, Raquel, who is showing worrying signs of strain verging on monomania, fall disastrously wide of the mark. Until, that is, they employ Lucy to help out, whereupon Raquel becomes only too aware of her isolation from family and friends.
Review:
How one takes this Dogme-style study of institutionalised autism might depend very much on one's mood at the time: on the one hand, Raquel's extreme and repetitive victimisation of her co-workers and passive-aggressive tyranny over her employers can be a source of comedy; but then there is the camera's own dogged adherence to the protagonist's routine existence, which tends to produce an identification with her lot, if not her clearly distressed behavioural response to it. Lucy's instinctive reaction of love and physical contact come as a breath of fresh air, and a moving moment in this deliberate and thought-provoking movie.
(La nana)
Country: CHI/MEX
Technical: col 95m
Director: Sebastián Silva
Cast: Catalina Saavedra, Claudia Celedón, Mariana Loyola
Synopsis:
A middle-class Chilean family's efforts to do something for their maid of twenty years' standing, Raquel, who is showing worrying signs of strain verging on monomania, fall disastrously wide of the mark. Until, that is, they employ Lucy to help out, whereupon Raquel becomes only too aware of her isolation from family and friends.
Review:
How one takes this Dogme-style study of institutionalised autism might depend very much on one's mood at the time: on the one hand, Raquel's extreme and repetitive victimisation of her co-workers and passive-aggressive tyranny over her employers can be a source of comedy; but then there is the camera's own dogged adherence to the protagonist's routine existence, which tends to produce an identification with her lot, if not her clearly distressed behavioural response to it. Lucy's instinctive reaction of love and physical contact come as a breath of fresh air, and a moving moment in this deliberate and thought-provoking movie.