10 April 2012
The maid in question is 40 and unmarried. She has served her bourgeois family in Santiago, Chile, for 25 years.
She has headaches and fainting fits, but whatever anyone says, she won’t let her domestic kingdom be entered by anyone else, treating a Peruvian assistant like dirt. She is essentially a lonely woman — the family is all she has. Besides, she says, the children love her.
Sebastian Silva’s film is very finely decorated by Catalina Saavedra’s loyal but self-destructive servant.
It’s a difficult performance, which the mouse-like Saavedra accomplishes with the greatest skill, and Silva refuses the easy way out by making the family affectionate and concerned. The result is funny as well as touching.
The Maid (La Nana)
Cert: 15
