My Favorite Films, Plague Edition (Volume 26): Chambermaids
La Camarista (The Chambermaid) (2018)
Directed by Lila Avilés
Directed by Lila Avilés
Starring Gabriela Cartol
Roma (2018)
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Starring Yalitza Aparicio
These two 2018 films from Mexico seem superficially similar, at least regarding plot. Both deal with the travails of a maid, and starkly contrast the differences between the classes. These are not just differences in creature comforts, education, and priorities, but contrasts in opportunity and the ability to survive setbacks. Both star Mexican actresses whose physical short stature and indigina appearance contrast with the more light-skinned and taller people they serve. And both lead actresses give ultra-realistic, natural, unforced performances that make us pull for them.
However, the two movies could not be more different in approach, appearance, and emotion. When I reviewed Roma in 2018, I marveled at the complexity of construction, including sound design, visual metaphors, and virtuosic camera work that captured the Mexico of the 1960’s with a mix of start reality and directorial artifice. In Roma one is drawn to the director, more than the characters, and I admire it much as I admire a work of art at a museum. When I wonder at Michelangelo’s David or Sistine ceiling, I do not imagine myself as the depicted characters. They are of another world, and so are Cuarón’s characters.
The lesser known, but equally good film La Camarista from the same year is quite another animal. It’s the first film by millennial Mexican director Lila Avilés (b. 1982). In this film we are claustrophobically attached to the chambermaid Eve as she navigates an enormous Mexico City luxury hotel. Until the very last frames, we never leave this sterile monument to wealth, following Eve from the basement laundry to the luxurious penthouse suite next to the helicopter port. The sense of isolation is profound. She performs most of her work in chilly silence (since maids mostly work when guests are absent), and we feel horror-movie fear when guests are present, or when she cleans brownish stains from the bathtub. Are they crazy murderers? But this director is too focused on unrelenting reality to resort to such melodramatic devices. The 100-minute movie has few dramatic lynchpins: will Eve get a promotion to the 42nd flood? Will she get to claim a red dress left in lost and found? Such are the dramas of everyday life, and the marvel of Ms. Avilés’ pacing is that we really care about these mundane things.
The film is at heart a devastating critique of the soulless decade we live in. This hotel is a prison, filmed here with unrelenting lack of sound or stimulus. Eva peers out the windows to the views of Mexico City, but we know this panorama is far from her reality, with her home a 2-hour commute away. We hear her talk on the phone with her 4-year-old son, but never see him, their home, or any other context about her life—only this frigid luxury hotel-penitentiary. It was very daring for Ms. Avilés to risk placing her entire movie within this sterile framework, utterly different from Mr. Cuarón’s world-encompassing camera in Roma. But the effect here is stunning, and we feel trapped like rats, just as Eva is.
Gabriela Cartol’s performance adds to this. For the first half of the movie we see a very restrained person loathe to share her story, personality, or traits with her co-workers (or us). She only gradually loosens, joining a GED class (she is really smart), stripping naked on a guest bed to perform for an enraptured window washer looking in the window, and retreating to the massive laundry facility to scream and cry when she does not get the promotion. We feel her fear when, after a heavy menstrual period, she bleeds onto a pristine white comforter and has to remove the stains to avoid censure. This is a masterful performance of pacing and control. When, at the end, we finally see Eve leave the hotel and walk into the open air, we are relieved, even though this is just another routine commute home for her. Just get us out of that hotel!
La Camarista, like no other I have seen places you inside the role of an “invisible” working class person. Since Eve is very short, and the camera usually stays at her facial level, we hear other taller (richer) people talking invisibly above her, much as a child experiences. This reminds me of social commentary that we mostly do not see or even sense the support workers all around us. Like Parasite (but entirely without humor or metaphor), this film is one of the best commentaries on income (and class) inequality that I have seen, but it will make you think twice the next time you check into a big hotel.
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Starring Yalitza Aparicio
These two 2018 films from Mexico seem superficially similar, at least regarding plot. Both deal with the travails of a maid, and starkly contrast the differences between the classes. These are not just differences in creature comforts, education, and priorities, but contrasts in opportunity and the ability to survive setbacks. Both star Mexican actresses whose physical short stature and indigina appearance contrast with the more light-skinned and taller people they serve. And both lead actresses give ultra-realistic, natural, unforced performances that make us pull for them.
However, the two movies could not be more different in approach, appearance, and emotion. When I reviewed Roma in 2018, I marveled at the complexity of construction, including sound design, visual metaphors, and virtuosic camera work that captured the Mexico of the 1960’s with a mix of start reality and directorial artifice. In Roma one is drawn to the director, more than the characters, and I admire it much as I admire a work of art at a museum. When I wonder at Michelangelo’s David or Sistine ceiling, I do not imagine myself as the depicted characters. They are of another world, and so are Cuarón’s characters.
The lesser known, but equally good film La Camarista from the same year is quite another animal. It’s the first film by millennial Mexican director Lila Avilés (b. 1982). In this film we are claustrophobically attached to the chambermaid Eve as she navigates an enormous Mexico City luxury hotel. Until the very last frames, we never leave this sterile monument to wealth, following Eve from the basement laundry to the luxurious penthouse suite next to the helicopter port. The sense of isolation is profound. She performs most of her work in chilly silence (since maids mostly work when guests are absent), and we feel horror-movie fear when guests are present, or when she cleans brownish stains from the bathtub. Are they crazy murderers? But this director is too focused on unrelenting reality to resort to such melodramatic devices. The 100-minute movie has few dramatic lynchpins: will Eve get a promotion to the 42nd flood? Will she get to claim a red dress left in lost and found? Such are the dramas of everyday life, and the marvel of Ms. Avilés’ pacing is that we really care about these mundane things.
The film is at heart a devastating critique of the soulless decade we live in. This hotel is a prison, filmed here with unrelenting lack of sound or stimulus. Eva peers out the windows to the views of Mexico City, but we know this panorama is far from her reality, with her home a 2-hour commute away. We hear her talk on the phone with her 4-year-old son, but never see him, their home, or any other context about her life—only this frigid luxury hotel-penitentiary. It was very daring for Ms. Avilés to risk placing her entire movie within this sterile framework, utterly different from Mr. Cuarón’s world-encompassing camera in Roma. But the effect here is stunning, and we feel trapped like rats, just as Eva is.
Gabriela Cartol’s performance adds to this. For the first half of the movie we see a very restrained person loathe to share her story, personality, or traits with her co-workers (or us). She only gradually loosens, joining a GED class (she is really smart), stripping naked on a guest bed to perform for an enraptured window washer looking in the window, and retreating to the massive laundry facility to scream and cry when she does not get the promotion. We feel her fear when, after a heavy menstrual period, she bleeds onto a pristine white comforter and has to remove the stains to avoid censure. This is a masterful performance of pacing and control. When, at the end, we finally see Eve leave the hotel and walk into the open air, we are relieved, even though this is just another routine commute home for her. Just get us out of that hotel!
La Camarista, like no other I have seen places you inside the role of an “invisible” working class person. Since Eve is very short, and the camera usually stays at her facial level, we hear other taller (richer) people talking invisibly above her, much as a child experiences. This reminds me of social commentary that we mostly do not see or even sense the support workers all around us. Like Parasite (but entirely without humor or metaphor), this film is one of the best commentaries on income (and class) inequality that I have seen, but it will make you think twice the next time you check into a big hotel.
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