This film from Chile portrays the lonely life of a maid and several of the complex interpersonal relationships in her life. We get an intimate look into how she relates to her employers and their kids as well as new maids coming in to help her. Her time as a maid has made her part of the family and she's very possessive of that. A wonderful performance by the lead actress which won her a Special Jury Prize for Acting - World Cinema Dramatic at Sundance. The film also won the Grand Jury Prize for World Dramatic as well as being nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. What looks like a downer of a movie is actually a feel-good film that is definitely well worth the time!7.2 / 10 stars--Zoooma, a Kat Pirate Screener

The pleasure of this modest but highly successful offering from Chile is the experience of watching a film unfold in a way that is contrary to one's expectations. Everything to begin with points toward an outcome that could be quite nasty. There is that gradual crescendo of menace remembered from such works as "Play Misty for Me" and "Mon Fils a Moi". We first meet the maid to an upper class Santiago family on her birthday when she reacts awkwardly to the attentions her employers bestow on her. A little later she obviously has her nose put out of joint when it is suggested that she needs an assistant as advancing years are beginning to affect her efficiency. To us she still appears quite young. There are just a few telltale signs that she may be a little past her best, health wise, but she still seems well able to do her job. Assistants one and two come and go, each driven away by the maid's intransigence in refusing to accept their role, accompanied by her ever darkening behaviour. By this stage in the film everything seems to have been set up for quite an awful showdown. But with the arrival of assistant number three the mood suddenly lightens. This isn't a sombre melodrama after all but a real feel-good flick, all the more pleasurable for this unexpected turn. It culminates in a deliciously pertinent closing shot of the maid taking part in the outdoor physical activity enjoyed by her third assistant. She is none the worse for wear and, for one brief moment, is even smiling.

It's just so hard to find good help these days. Just ask the Valdes family, whose live-in maid of twenty-three years is quickly becoming a veritable case-study in passive-aggressive behavior.Forty years old, with no boyfriend, husband or children of her own, Raquel (the award-winning Catalina Saavedra) clings to her life with the Valdes with all the tenacity of a drowning sailor holding onto a rope. Whenever the family tries to hire someone to help her with her work, Raquel goes after the interloper with an understated viciousness bordering on psychosis. This is her territory, and she isn't about to yield a single inch of it if she can at all help it.Sebastian Silva's Chilean feature "The Maid" could easily have devolved into a class-war screed, with Raquel as the representation of the downtrodden working classes and the Valdes family the embodiment of the unfeeling social elite exploiting those workers. Instead, we get a much more nuanced and subtle look at the gulf that separates the haves from the have-nots in society. For Raquel is hardly an inherently noble figure, what with her petulance, her petty jealousies and her callousness towards those she feels are a threat to her. Similarly, the Valdes's appear to be genuinely nice people (especially the mother, well played by Claudia Celedon) who go the extra mile to make Raquel's life a comfortable one and try to make her feel like a member of their family. The problem is that Raquel has become too dependent on this extended family for her own happiness (we only ever see her talking on the phone to her actual mother). Indeed, it takes another maid (Mariana Loyola) - a free-spirited young Peruvian who takes her job seriously but doesn't allow it to define who she is - to finally break through Raquel's emotional armor, which is the first step in Raquel's beginning to loosen up and concentrate on cultivating her own identity and happiness for a change. We sense in the end that this journey to self-awareness is going to be a long and arduous one for Raquel, but the movie leaves us sensing she is more likely than not going to complete that journey.Silva has directed the film in a totally naturalistic style, making us feel as if we are eavesdropping on the day-to-day life of this household. There's even a bit of dark humor in its depiction of the "maid wars" to go along with all the emotional sturm-und-drang and domestic conflict.Though there isn't a weak acting job among the lot of them, it is Saavedra's tour-de-force performance as Raquel that truly stands out. Shy and self-effacing one moment, she is sly and aggressive the next, and Saavedra never lets us see the mechanics of the transitions. It is a seamless piece of work that merited the many accolades it received in festivals around the world.

The Maid is my kind of low-level drama; a brave and confrontational film about a character whom hates change and outsider influence who's approaching a chapter in their lives in which change is unfolding all around them as well as inside of them, forcing the confronting of such attitudes and placing the results at the forefront in what is an incredible film. It is ironic for a character to stand for such things whilst occupying a film all about the breaking away from a proverbial 'norm' or what is expected; while proof that some of the freshest and most invigorating films are presently coming out of both the South and Latin nations of The Americas, The Maid stands in stark opposition to its neighbours to its continent's north whom can seemingly only dream of producing a film as daring; as unabashed and as inclined to revolve around the exploits of a woman in her forties going through tough times as that of Sebastián Silva's film.This sense of detachment is very much established in the opening scene, our first observing of its titular maid is that of the woman alone in a small room about to begin a makeshift dinner. She has made the evening meal for the large family sitting next door, those for whom she works, and where it is they that we hear, it is their maid that we see. Silva's film is one all about those on the fringes; those outside of a predominant clique, the film fully embracing that notion by zeroing in on those whom are usually placed to the side in what is a highly engaging and quite terrific piece going on to document what is an important chapter in the life of this woman.Catalina Saavedra is Raquel; a maid of whom has been a live-in carer with the rich Chilean family she serves for almost half of her life. This family is big, with sons and daughters of varying ages; a rich family, made aware to us via their inhabiting of a detached house with barred windows, perimeter walls and pool at the rear. Raquel has observed the children grow up; she has maintained a bond with the wife and mother of the faction in Pilar (Celedón); she enjoys son Lucas' company - indeed, as the poster puts it: "She's more or less family". The film will open on Raquel's birthday, her 41st; a birthday she does not spend with that of her actual family in her mother, despite the establishment via a mobile phone conversation that there is little issue between them; rather, she is with her employers, and on what is one night of the year in which specialities and so forth for her ought to take precedence, the party ends up a minute and low-key affair, with the father and husband Edmundo (Goic) excusing himself during the pleasantries and Raquel herself ending up doing most of the clearing away anyway.Times are changing for Raquel and the family; one of the daughters, in Camila (García-Huidobro), has grown up and is approaching her twenties so is no longer victim to the meticulous morning process that sees Raquel kick the doors to the bedrooms of the kids prior to school. Rather, the maid's diminishing control sees Camila's morning process take a more disconnected route; later dinner time speakings on how the crowd she's in with at college are boisterous and not necessarily too law abiding seeing Camila's newfound reckless persona clash with how it's established Raquel operates. On top of these ripples, Raquel herself has been experiencing dizzy spells and has even passed out; something that leads to Pilar suggesting that a new maid tag-along in the near future to help out, something Raquel greets fervently with cries of disdain. One such replacement does arrive, but we do not intermingle with the warm welcomes from the owner; instead, we linger with Raquel as if back-stage, as if it is the ghost of the woman peering on through a glass door as she does at this new threat arriving supposedly present to take her place.Raquel sees the family as an extension to that of her own existence - like the model boats Edmundo makes in his spare time, they are at once precious and delicate but unlike the home's co-owner, there is no line as to which to draw between pastime and lifestyle. With these model galleons, the characteristics of which are that we sense them as these fragile and breakable items, comes the lingering tone of the film; as a delicate, breakable atmosphere one could easily cut and something that goes a long way in encapsulating the atmosphere prominent almost throughout. Yet, where we dislike Raquel through her means of banishing anything that threatens this house-state she has worked twenty years towards preserving, the film grants her an arc upon which she can undergo change; a fellow character, a fellow maid, allowing transition and veering the film away from ninety minutes of detailing a near-psycho doing sordid things to keep their possessive ways flourishing and into something so much more substantial. The film is ultimately a character study, not a freak show; a film whose nihilist outcomes feel ready and available but are not necessarily routes Silva wishes to take the film toward. The Maid is one of two raw, exciting films I have seen from the nation of Chile in recent years; the other being Pablo Larraín's Tony Manero, itself a bruised, stripped down and really rather spirited drama with a mock-hand held aesthetic complimenting that pent-up and rather angry feeling prominent therein. Both films cover that of a paranoid lead, whom takes time to manipulate their surroundings for that of their own benefit as that of a society or congregation encapsulating them appears to gradually fall apart. Both films are as good as one another, and The Maid is one of the best foreign language films of its year.