My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

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Saturday, June 26, 2010

A movie about social class that avoids all the cliches : The Maid

Among the many things I liked in "The Maid" (La Nana), a Chilean (?) movie cast with, to me, complete unknowns, is how well writer-director stays clear of the upstairs-downstairs cliches; this story about a housemaid in a wealthy South American household, family with 4 kids of a wide range of ages, and how she/the maid feels put upon, overworked, mainly lonely and depressed about her life, at 41 (it opens with her birthday) and with no family of her own and the children in this family growing up to inevitably leave - as it's pointed out to her, they will never care about her to the extent she cares about them. What's great is that the family is really nice - they're not made into cheap targets and caricatures, they try very hard to do what's right for their maid, they get along nicely with one another, their well-to-do but by no means garish or crude, but they're not sentimentalized either, they have flaws and squabbles and make mistakes as we all do. Through the course of the movie we learn more about the maid and her loneliness - she is apparently a virgin at 41 - but she, too, is not sentimentalized of made heroic, she has plenty of faults and she's difficult - you'd probably fire her, if you could. But she grows during the movie, has a breakdown and comes out of it stronger and ready to learn how to get along with others and how to take care of herself and make the best of life. It's by no means an upbeat movie, but much more positive than you think it's going to be. Very well acted and scripted, very simple, like a great play - almost all of the movie takes place inside the house, including the entire first 25 minutes.

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