The Maid is a comedy of cultural conflict that could easily be remade into an absolutely horrific American vehicle. It practically sounds like a September release set to star a beautiful Jessica (Alba, Simpson, or Biel) but the wacky remake of The Maid would almost certainly miss what works about the original.
(Don’t they always?) For awhile, the set-up and plot description of The Maid plays almost like a quirky sitcom, but writer/director Sebastian Silva wisely focuses on character instead of caricature and has crafted a film that is surprisingly moving by the time it reaches its bittersweet final act.
With rave reviews, it seems almost inevitable that a story this clever will be brought up during a discussion of potential foreign remakes at a production meeting in the near future (if it hasn’t happened already). This version of The Maid isn't perfect, but it avoids so many of the pitfalls of its concept that a remake is simply too risky an idea.
One of the main reasons that The Maid works and an element that could easily be derailed is the moving lead performance by Catalina Saavedra as the title character, Raquel. The film opens on her birthday, as the family that she's been working for most of her life tries to drag her into something of a celebration.
Raquel is clearly a shy woman with the kind of sad eyes that betray a lifetime of servitude without even the conscious awareness that she may have lost something by giving everything to a family other than her own. You see, she may not be blood but Raquel doesn't see the family she works for as anything but her own. She's watched the children grown up and has dealt with the matriarch's flights of shopping fancy for more than two decades.
But Raquel is starting to snap under the pressure. She has serious migraine headaches, is clearly exhausted, and starts to butt heads with the older children in the family. When they bring in some help in the form of another maid, Raquel sees this as an advance on her territory, a potential replacement more than a helping hand, and, naturally, she reacts. She sabotages each potential new employee – locking them out of the house, letting the cat out so the new girl will be blamed, etc. Raquel is losing it, both mentally and physically, until the hiring of Camila (Andrea Garcia-Huidobro) really changes her life by reminding her what she's been missing.
With the arrival of Camila in the final act, The Maid goes from something of a diary of a madwoman to the film that's earned the nominations and rave reviews that Silva's work has been receiving around the world. Don't get me wrong. The first half of the film is strong, especially in Saavedra's compelling and consistent lead performance, but the film felt somewhat slight and simple to this viewer for a little over half of its running time.
If Raquel had driven one more maid to quit without repercussion The Maid would have lost its heroine and turned her into too much of an anti-hero. Smartly, Silva realizes this and makes a left turn with the hiring of a real friend for Raquel that exposes a sad truth of a life that's lived basically in servitude. Raquel doesn't know her mother, has no idea about love or sex, and looks like she can barely breathe outside of her little room in the back of the house. Is it any wonder that she works through exhaustion or sabotages those who move in on her turf? She wouldn’t make it in the real world.
I wish the entirety of The Maid was as confident and intriguing as the final twenty minutes and the "wacky comedy" that is sure to inspire the inevitable remake lost me a few times. Locking out a maid while she has something in the oven is borderline sociopathic and it's hard to root for a character who behaves so erratically. But, ultimately, Silva isn't necessarily asking us to root for Raquel. He's asking us to take a second look and realize the choices people like her make every day – to give so much while taking so little.
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