Catalina Saavedra & Mariana Loyola

A spiky social comedy from Chile, Sebastian Silva's "The Maid" features a marvelous, moon-eyed actress, Catalina Saavedra, as a sphinx-like servant who has lived, worked and, slowly, calcified for a bourgeois Santiago family for 23 of her 41 years.

She is a part of the family, but in every meaningful way she is alone, and going a little nuts. Migraines are getting to her; so is the teenage daughter (Andrea Garcia-Huidobro) of the well-to-do household, with whom she engages in all sorts of psychological warfare. A second housemaid is hired by the home's matriarch (Claudia Celedon), whose air of concern is matched only by her air of distraction and vague sense that there's some more shopping to be done, somewhere. Saavedra's Raquel takes care of any perceived threats, including new colleagues, in her own fashion. And then, with sweet, sensible Lucy (Mariana Loyola), a younger maid who joins the family and has her own strategies for survival and for friendship, a deeply unhappy woman transforms into something else.

"The Maid" is a small film but very sure, and extremely well-acted. Its perspective is that of an unabashed perch of privilege. Silva shot his movie, which he co-wrote with Pedro Peirano, in the home where he grew up. The maids in this Santiago social circle, he has written, aren't like the come-and-go nannyscape workers of other monied cultures.

"In Chile it's more of an anthropological problem," he writes in the film's background notes. "They're like nuns -- the uniform, the work, the little room, hopefully a TV, and that's it. That kind of life can really ruin your emotional intelligence." It's also fodder for a sharp-witted comedy of manners.

Tone is everything here. While likely influenced by Chilean absurdists of another era, such as playwright Egon Wolff, in "The Maid" Silva treads an ultra-fine line between caricature and character, leaning toward the latter without weighing down an essentially featherweight creation You think the story's going one way. Then it goes quite another. Throughout, Saavedra's increasingly desperate measures to protect her turf are at once startling, funny and weirdly poignant, as is the film itself.

 

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"The Maid" Movie Trailer

 

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No MPAA rating (some nudity and language).

Running time: 1:35.

Cast: Catalina Saavedra (Raquel); Mariana Loyola (Lucy); Claudia Celedon (Pilar); Alejandro Goic (Mundo); Andrea Garcia-Huidobro (Camilia); Mercedes Villanueva (Mercedes); Anita Reeves (Sonia); Agustin Silva (Lucas).

Credits: Directed by Sebastian Silva; written by Silva and Pedro Peirano; produced by Gregorio Gonzalez. An Elephant Eye Films release.