The well-trodden British genre of 'upstairs downstairs' films is reinvented in Sebastian Silva's Chilean drama, La nana (The Maid). Drawing from his own experience raised in a household with live-in maids, Silva brings both an inquisitive and empathetic eye to this ignored domestic sphere.
La Nana follows the institutionalised life of Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), a live-in maid who has been serving the family for 23 years. The film begins on her 41st birthday, and with a delightfully awkward scene that clearly establishes her place as an intrinsic part of the family, though ultimately and irrevocably an outsider. When Pilar (Claudia Celedon) decides Raquel needs help and brings in a new maid, the stressed-out and headache prone Raquel begins to unspool.
After a series of humorous if borderline creepy run-ins with two of the new maids, Raquel eventually meets her match with Lucy (Mariana Loyola). Unable to scare her away like the others, Raquel eventually opens up to Lucy's infectious enthusiasm and light-hearted approach to life.
It's easy to see why this film won at Sundance. Saavedra totally embodies the role of Raquel, holed up in her disinfected cage, while Sergio Armstrong's handheld cinematography underscores the claustrophobia of her existence. Silva and co-writer Pedro Peirano's screenplay comes across as personal and insightful without being indulgent. Indeed Silva saw the film as an opportunity to, "exorcise [the] unsolved emotional relationship with [my] maid." To that end, he specifically asked Armstrong to, "shoot as if the camera was a curious boy" while his story reflects his own understanding of Raquel: from wary distance to warm-hearted empathy.
This world of live-in maids seems particularly foreign to Australian audiences. Indeed the festival crowd seemed so caught up in 'the maid phenomenon' -- as Silva refers to it -- that in he had to gently remind us that it's not really what the film is about. Despite La nana's uplifting ending, the film is ultimately a rather poignant portrait of woman breaking out her state of protracted childhood by learning how to love.
Published on Rotten Tomatoes.
US release date (limited): 15 October 2009
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