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Welcome to Raquel's world. She is a maid for an upper middle class family in Santiago, Chile, that has been with them for twenty years of joyless existence. Raquel is a loner showing signs of fatigue as her work never stops. She is up and running the household for Pilar, who certainly appreciates her work, as witnessed at the beginning of the story when she gathers her clan to celebrate Raquel's birthday. Raquel gets along well with all the family members with the exception of the older daughter, who can't explain the animosity she gets from the maid. Part of the problem appears to be the way Raquel perceives the girl to be pretty and full of life, while hers is going away fast. Other than being with this family, she has no life of her own.

Pilar decides to hire someone else to help Raquel with her demanding job. She is still going to be in charge, but that way, Pilar figures, it will give the maid some badly needed rest. Unfortunately, Raquel clashes with two of the prospective would-be-helpers, a young Peruvian girl, and an older woman, who tells Raquel not to love these people too much because they really don't appreciate what she does for the family. In both cases, Raquel ends up locking them out of the house and they get fed up. When Lucy, the third assistant, is hired, she proves to be a perfect foil to Raquel's objections. Lucy is a no-nonsense woman who really sees Raquel for what she; Lucy realizes that under the tough exterior, there is a good person waiting to emerge with the right kind of approach. Soon they end up striking a good working relationship and even traveling for the Christmas holidays to Lucy's parents home in the country.

Sebastian Silva, co-wrote and directed this Chilean film that has proved to be a favorite in the festivals where it has been shown. The film works because Mr. Silva knows well the intricacies of life with a housekeeper, something that in other countries is a rarity. The director had worked with some of the actors in the cast in his first film "La vida me mata". He shoots the film using a lot of close ups that shows plainly the emotions going on with the characters he presents us.

The best thing in the film is Catalina Saavedra, who as Raquel runs away with the picture. She is charismatic and even her mean spirited attitude toward the others can be explained in the way she measures herself against the rest of the family. Claudia Celedon has some good moments as Pilar, the lady of the house. Mariana Oyola is also effective as Lucy, the only one that really understood what the trouble was with Raquel.

An enjoyable film thanks to Mr. Silva and Ms. Saavedra.

She's going a bit crazy. The house is her turf; and she knows how to take advantage of it. She will lock you out if she can, so pocket a spare key. Raquel! Let me in!

An amusing study of human territoriality and the limitations of one's ability to control what is thought as a possessed environment, the film explores irrational behaviors that can be remedied by tenderness and patience.

This Chilean film is among the best foreign origin films of the year. Sad, funny, charming and unpredictable. Nice job, Sebastian Silva. Catalina Saaverda is brilliant as the somewhat disturbed maid, Raquel. The film offers us just a glimpse at Chile; which looks like a nice place.

As a child growing up with a parent in the Domestic Service Industry, this movie was very touching and comical at the same time. So much of what happens when the family is not around and the house staff dynamics are well portrayed here. The difference is the cultural nuances that made this film so great. Some of subjects areas caught on film would never really be seen in North America Cinema.

The family dynamics portrayed in the film is also very interesting. The movie has some documentary style camera angles but it is very much a look in at one persons life.

I recommend this movie.

Sebastián Silva concocts a film that would have tickled Freud…and Karl Marx too. Without much of a heavy hand, the perils of the class system create an unusual tension for modern American audiences. We see the "suffering" of a domestic worker, Raquel. But with the current controversy of Latin American domestic workers in the U.S. as well as North American movies audiences programmed to unhappy oddballs pulling out the automatic weapons to exact revenge expectations the film sets-up are not ever realized. This is a character study of a woman, played with convincing and unnerving power by Catalina Saavedra, who has no emotional life outside the family she serves. They don't abuse her, but they have no understanding of her deep attachment to them, and we enter the story as things begin to fray.

Raquel is moody and has resorted to passive-aggressive behavior in dealing with the family. It's her birthday and she won't come into the party prepared for her because, she says, she's embarrassed. In fact, she's in control of everyone. It's a natural outcome of long-time maladjusted servitude where domestics are privy to the most intimate knowledge of family life, often knowing "secrets" about one family member that others don't know. But Raquel is near breaking because no one has ever considered her own emotional needs and unconsciously, she senses, "Life is short." Sensing the need for some kind of change, the mother decides to employ a second domestic to "help" Raquel, and the stage is set for high drama. Raquel takes offense that she's considered inadequate, but she too hasn't a clue as to what's ailing her. It takes several assistants before someone arrives and recognizes the needs that Raquel has been not only been deprived of, but also she's deprived herself. This second maid, Lucy, played with terrific abandon by Mariana Loyola is the key to the film. Lucy is everything the rest of characters aren't. She's fulfilled and happy. She knows herself and if something's lacking, she calls it out.

What's surprising is the filmmaker trusts the characters and doesn't pander to the audience's need for farce or melodrama. A scene where a frustrated second maid is locked out of the house by Raquel and winds up climbing a trellis to reenter seems perfectly natural. And while the emotional "breakthoughs" that Raquel will or won't make are modest, and there's no overt revolution by the domestics here, the change in Raquel from the beginning of the film to the final scene is substantial and beautifully played by Saavedra. Whether American audiences can stick with the modest goals that Sebastián Silva sets up is questionable, but the charm he finds in such a bleak situation is rare and always enjoyable.

La nana Is a nice drama movie about the life and also the internal changes of a housekeeper in a wealthy sector of the capital of Chile, Santiago.

It may be just a small history of a small piece of the Chilean culture, but definitely makes point in showing what, for us Chileans, is kind of a rare phenomenon: the way of having the housekeeper living in your own house, just like an individual member of your family. Normally, all the people here employs a maid but just for a some days a week, just to clean or cook, but there is also an large amount of wealthy families who employs these women (they always are) 24hr and 365 days the year. Anyway, is so special this "contract" that these workers become part of the family, and interact with the rest just like any brother, sister, aunt, or even parent.

I think this relationship is perfectly showed in this movie and also adds something it may be common as well and is about the simplistic life of Raquel, because she really doesn't have any other thing to do besides her work.

I recommend this movie also because is a very well directed one; the drama mixed with occasional comedy just do a good job carrying the whole history. It's very absorbent :)

La Nana (2009), shown in the U.S. as "The Maid," was written and directed by Sebastián Silva. This film recounts the life, and plight, of a maid in a well-to-do Chilean family. Catalina Saavedra portrays Raquel, who has worked for the same family for 23 years. She lives in their home, and knows their habits, secrets, and idiosyncrasies.

The problem is that Raquel has no life outside of the family, and nothing much to show for these years of devoted service. It's true that everyone considers her "one of the family," but she really isn't. When her behavior becomes somewhat erratic, the family has to cope with the problem.

To their credit, they don't consider firing Raquel, but their solution is to hire another maid. Raquel perceives this as a threat to her position and identity. Her efforts to force the new maids to leave are treated as comedy, and they are humorous, but beneath the humor is the sad fact that if Raquel loses her central position within the household, she loses her the only thing of value that she has.

Catalina Saavedra is outstanding as Raquel. In fact, it would be hard to imagine another actor in the role. You accept her as La Nana, and you have to remind yourself that this is a work of fiction, not a documentary about domestic service in Chile.

The film is worth seeking out, although the ending is not really satisfying. Despite the weak ending, it's a movie made with skill and obvious respect for the protagonist. It was shown in the Dryden Theatre, Rochester, as part of the excellent Rochester Labor Film Series. It may be hard to find in a theater, and will work well on a small screen. See it!

I just saw this at the Sydney Film Festival and enjoyed it very much. An up close and personal drama with nice comic moments about a live in housekeeper who works for wealthy family in Santiago. Catalina Saavedra in the lead role delivers a very strong performance as the shy and emotionally distant maid who literally doesn't have a life besides her role within the house.

There are some really fine scenes throughout this film as we slowly get to know the family and obviously Raquel the maid. I liked the fact that the family did not treat her like dirt and knew her value to the household.

A small character driven film with a warm heart and realistic touches. It was also nice to see the Director and Lead Actress (Sebastian Silva and Catalina Saavedra) live after the screening for Q & A's with the appreciative audience.

This was one of the movies we saw at Sundance 2009. We found it to be an interesting portrayal of the relationship between a live-in maid and "her" family. The family portrayed was from Chile, and reflected the writer/director's actual family.

The maid shown in this film truly runs the household and has a strange power over the family. She knows what happens to everyone and how to sabotage them if need be. She has a love/hate relationship with most members of the family, some of it closer to hate more often than not. She also will not allow another maid to share "her" household, until she meets a certain someone. Since this is a realistic portrayal of Chilean family life, we found it fascinating to watch. Good job to all of the actors!

This is the true great movie of the year. Intimate,funny and unpredictable. When I started watching the film I thought that I knew how it would end( I always know), either there was going to be some killings or they were going to show us the true colors of the "capitalist employers". I was completely wrong . I kept peeping into the lives of this upper middle class Chilean family and their very awkward maid utterly fascinated by everything and enjoying every minute. It looks like the movie was filmed with a hand held camera which combine with the very good acting it makes you believe that you are not watching a movie but a story from real life.

The Maid (2009)

In some ways this film is extraordinary. It's small, limited in its setting, and it has a slightly predictable inevitability. But it is so seeringly well acted and filmed with an honest small budget honesty, it's hard not to appreciate. It also deals with a huge issue in many countries--the use of household help, often now from other, poorer countries, and the ironies and sadness that goes with this class structure.

Catalina Saavedra is "the maid" in this, and like the leading role in the even more astonishing "The Hedgehog" we get inside this person's modest and seemingly invisible persona to really get them, or part of them, for a brief spell. It's moving--it made me cry--and revealing. It's not like we don't know that live-in maids lead an unfair, often unhappy life (which they disguise from their employers). But we aren't often faced with it so plainly.

This also is revealing about the standard of living in Chile, which is one of the two or three South American countries fully above the "third world" status you might think at first. The fact it did so well in the United States (earning half a million dollars) is not because it was a glimpse of a foreign impoverished country, but because it resembled so well the situation in American households. Those with maids.

See this? Yes, certainly. It has a simple cinema-verite style, not quite home movies but shot almost entirely inside the house in a shaky camera. The plot might not be enough for some viewers--after awhile it is what it is without a lot of complications. Or at least not complications we haven't seen before. What carries it is the sincerity of the performances, especially Saavedra's.

I signed up to IMDb just to leave my word here, and try to warn the other users. IMDb is great community and i relay a lot on it to chose what movies watch, so i just want to do my bit here.

The story is slow and plain, no big conflict, twist or what ever. Witch joint with the poor photography made it painful watch to the end. Also the story treat the maid/bosses dynamic in a very cliché way, as the characters are also a cliché representation of social stereotypes in Chilean culture.

The image is extreme low contrast, no bokeh, hand-held-make-you-dizzy camera. I think that was recorded in a real house and not studio, because the camera moments you can feel that cameraman need space to move and is not available.

Some unnecessary no-erotic nudes (erotic nude are always welcome) and sex jokes/issues.

Is really a shame for the Chilean movies industry, if you want to watch some nice Chilean movies go for Machuca, El Chacotero Sentimental maybe Kiltro or even Che Copete.

La Nana (The Maid) Chilean film 2009 A superior "home movie" in every sense. Painful! Painful... for outsiders who don't want to see families singing several separate "Happy Birthdays", even in Spanish; or to suffer the spectacle of spoilt children, or of a harrowed, neurotic aging house-servant (in an admittedly virtuoso performance of prolonged misery by Catalina Saavedra).

Only the mother of the family is given a sustained characterisation; father and children generally obnoxious, and shallowly portrayed. Even the framing and sequence of indoor shots is a trial for the spectator. Painful. Might increase one's sympathy for domestic servants, but is early-morning jogging (the long closing shot) really the answer?

La Nana (The Maid) was written and directed by Sebastiān Silva, and tells the story of a live-in maid working for an affluent Chilean family. The movie opens with Racquel (Catalina Saavedra) sitting alone in the kitchen eating a basic meal; whilst the family she works for dine in much more pleasant surroundings. After giving this first impression of an oppressed servant, Silva then gradually reveals the much more complex relationships which are at play, and Racquel, who has worked for the family for twenty-three years, is shown as more of a troubled member of the family than an employee. As the tagline says, "she's more or less family".

Racquel has no life outside of the family home where she has worked for so long, and is suffering a kind of mid-life crisis, causing her to become ill and clash with the family. The family try to help her by bringing in extra staff, which leads to some funny moments as she tries desperately to cling on to her position at the centre of the household. Eventually she makes a friend, begins to get a life outside the home, and disaster is averted.

The direction and cinematography are wonderful here; feeling at times more like documentary than fiction. Catalina Saavedra is utterly convincing in the lead role, and is well supported by all. There's very little music in this movie, but there is a theme song call AyAyAyAy which is entirely addictive. This is definitely worth a watch!

The first half of La Nana really views like a horror feature. At every moment, it seems that some atrocity is about to take place. Then things lighten up about half way into the film. I am not sure that it ever becomes a comedy, however. I would characterize this almost "coming of age" story as sui generis. It does not fit into any of the standard categories but conveys more of a message about how affected by other people everyone is and how everyone has the capacity to change.

The Maid, or La Nana is a Chilean film that is hard to categorize. Raquel has served an upper class Chilean family for over twenty years, and when she becomes overwhelmed by the demands of the household, they hire another woman to help with the chores. Through a sequence of different pranks, which includes locking the helper out of the house, the assistant quits. It turns out that Raquel is territorial, and possessive of her employers.

The next prospect, an older, tougher woman is more difficult to intimidate, but the maid in charge manages to also make life unbearable for her and she gives up and leaves. Raquel believes that she is part of the family because of her many years of living with them and they, in turn, feel obligated to to take care of her.

The lead actress, Catalina Saavedra, is a plump, plain looking woman who will alternately make you feel sorry for her at one moment and then want someone to do the right thing and lock up this mentally unstable creature. She is outstanding and had me convinced that she is really nuts.

Both funny and sad, The Maid is an excellent movie.

The recent earthquake in Chile drew attention to the South American country, and so it makes "La nana" ("The Maid" in English) all the more interesting. Sebastian Silva's film focuses on maid Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) in a Chilean family's house. Raquel sees herself as a part of this family. She has been using so much chlorine to clean the house that she's starting to have dizzy spells, and so they try to bring in people to help her, causing her to react.

I see this movie not only as a look at this woman and her life, but also as a look at 21st century Chile. From what I've heard, the country is advancing in many ways, despite the earthquake (which was stronger than the one in Haiti last January). A young woman whom I know recently went there and lived with the Mapuche Indians, and also met the judge who prosecuted Pinochet. I guess that I can't fully relate that to the events portrayed in "La nana", but I definitely recommend the movie. Worth seeing.

This film's Spanish title "La Nana" has several possible meanings: it could be "The Grandmother" or "The Nanny" ... and the actress in the title role (Catalina Saavedra) was previously best-known for portraying a nanny in a Chilean soap opera. But the plot makes it clear that this film is "The Maid": a character study of Raquel, the live-in housemaid for a Santiago, Chile family. Raquel has been with them for 23 years:since before the younger children's births; now her forty-first birthday forces her to reappraise her life.

The family are prosperous, with no explanation for their wealth. Their house has two maids' bedrooms and several family bedrooms; the exterior has a submerged swimming pool and a lush garden (though the gardener only visits weekly). One parent seems to have something to do with a local university, yet we never hear any mention of income nor business. The husband has plenty of time to build elaborate model ships.

Raquel's position is awkward: she's "one of the family" when it suits the family's convenience though not otherwise. The family celebrate her birthday with a cake, and the wife announces that Raquel needn't wash the dishes tonight ... but that only means they'll be left for her tomorrow! We're told that Raquel gets a day off each week, but we never learn how she spends this nor how the family get through an entire day without her. If Raquel is receiving any actual wages besides meals and a bed, we never know. Nearly the entire film takes place on this house's grounds, giving us no real view of typical Chilean life.

The narrative sets up events but gives them no pay-off. A couple of times, Raquel collapses on the job. Is this merely down to overwork, or an omen of something worse? When the family engage another maid to assist her, Raquel's bizarre behaviour seems to foreshadow mental illness. None of these ideas are developed.

Actress Catalina Saavedra is impressive, and well-cast. She's stocky, clearly able to do drudgery, and she has moles on her face and neck. A prettier, more graceful actress would be less plausible in this role, since a prettier woman would possess more career options.

I was intrigued at how much U.S. culture was present in this South American film. The characters sing "The Birthday Song" (in Spanish) and one family member performs "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" on piano. Two characters wear T-shirts depicting, respectively, Disney animals and the New York Giants football team (who are actually based in New Jersey).

When I view a non-Anglophone film, I usually concentrate on the dialogue rather than the subtitles, since subtitles are often inaccurate and I want to improve my language skills. I have no trouble understanding Spanish spoken by Spaniards, Mexicans or Puerto Ricans, but I had difficulty following the Chilean accents on this movie's soundtrack. Part of my difficulty was down to bizarre decisions by director Sebastian Silva. "La Nana" has a couple of Robert Altman-style scenes in which several characters speak simultaneously, in rapid-fire Spanish. Oddly, throughout this film Silva stages scenes so that an actor speaks while his or her mouth is off-screen, or with head turned away from the camera, or from a distance, or while photographed through tinted glass, or even speaking while wearing a gorilla mask(!). Silva seems intent on minimising footage in which an actor's mouth needs to synch with the dialogue track. I suspect that there were two reasons for this: to save money on post-dubbing, and to encourage foreign distributors to release this film dubbed into other languages.

Speaking of distributors: at several moments in this film, we glimpse female or (more rarely) male nudity that isn't relevant to the plot, and which only seems meant to give this film a better chance at receiving foreign distribution. (Any movie with a few seconds of female breasts qualifies as an "art film".)

The entire film is shot with a hand-held camera that moves erratically throughout, and which becomes positively vertiginous in the final scene as Saavedra jogs through Santiago's streets. To keep her in frame and in focus, the camera operator appears to be jogging BACKWARDS directly in front of her, and the camera joggles up and down as if it's getting sea-sick. (The film was shot in 16mm and converted to 35mm.) Elsewhere, director Silva makes some strange camera decisions. When the family's teenage son Lucas (played by director Silva's younger brother) starts performing a magic trick with a handkerchief, I was eager to see the trick itself and also eager to see the boy's level of skill in performing it ... but Silva tilts the camera so that the trick is performed at the very edge of the frame, and we can't see what's happening. Later, when Lucas performs an entire magic show for his family, the camera sets this up but then cuts to an altogether different scene. (The Lucas character seems to be based on director Silva as a teenager.)

Unless Chilean Spanish is significantly different from other forms of Spanish in some way I don't know about, the dialogue throughout this film contains some strange word choices. In one sequence, adults keep referring to a cat as "uno gatito" (a kitten) when it's clearly an adult feline. (UPDATE: Some correspondents have informed me that these traits are appropriate for Chilean Spanish.)

Normally, when I see impressive work by an actor, director or screenwriter previously unknown to me, I state in my review that I look forward to more work by that person. "La Nana" shows talent and ability on the part of writer/director Silva and actress Saavedra: I'm glad that I've seen this film, and I would happily view more work by either or both of them. However, nothing here engaged me enough to make me want to seek out more of Silva's or Saavedra's work. My rating for "The Maid": 6 out of 10.

The premise to this film seems like an obvious setup to some social commentary about class. A 41-year-old live-in maid to an affluent family (a couple and their four kids) has a job that spans nearly all of her waking hours. The family is carefree and has minimal concerns about life; the husband's desire to sneak out and golf without his wife knowing about it is seems to be the extent of their drama. Meanwhile, the maid is showing serious signs of strain after having worked for them for two decades. She often has a sullen attitude, does petty things to the teenage daughter, and most concerningly, gets headaches that sometimes cause her to black out and fall down. When the mother of the family tries to bring in other maids to help her, out of insecurity she gets territorial and acts in cruel ways to the new women.

One of the strengths of the film is that it doesn't fall into an obvious story, one that would have a completely evil family and a virtuous maid, ala Cinderella. The mother is kind and tolerant of the maid's behavior, and there is not some big traumatic event that easily explains the tension we see. The issue is the system, and it's apparent that this 41-year-old maid was once just as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as the first new woman they bring in to help. Her family is distant and her five siblings have all got families of their own. The family she's living with, with kids she's known all their lives, is still in the end her employer, and free to remind her of the fact that she's "just the maid," and easily replaceable. She has no free time or outside life, and not surprisingly, we find out she's a virgin.

It seemed like the film was asking to empathize with someone who is frankly a hard person to like, given some of the mean things she does, and then it has a new maid do just that, which was a wonderful moment. She responds to hate with love, and in one of the film's more profound moments, asks the woman "what did they do to you?" instead of getting angry at her. The film gives us the perspective of a maid and in that way reminds us of the dramatic effect wealth disparity has on the most basic ways people live their lives, but it seemed like it was really more about empathy and love than class, which was really quite touching. Lucy, the newcomer who demonstrates this (Mariana Loyola) is an incredible character, and left a lasting impression.

This film from Chile portrays the lonely life of a maid and several of the complex interpersonal relationships in her life. We get an intimate look into how she relates to her employers and their kids as well as new maids coming in to help her. Her time as a maid has made her part of the family and she's very possessive of that. A wonderful performance by the lead actress which won her a Special Jury Prize for Acting - World Cinema Dramatic at Sundance. The film also won the Grand Jury Prize for World Dramatic as well as being nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. What looks like a downer of a movie is actually a feel-good film that is definitely well worth the time!

7.2 / 10 stars

--Zoooma, a Kat Pirate Screener

I'm not sure why anyone would want to make a movie based on an absolutely miserable, nasty woman. She's portrayed as an aging maid but she's only 41, which really isn't old by any measure. The way she behaves is confounding, and why she's not canned by the family is even more bewildering. A wealthy family decides to hire help for her rather than just fire her, even though she is rude to everybody and clearly has mental health issues as well. She mouths off to her boss (mother), practically calling her elder daughter a liar. That would not be tolerated from a mere staff member under any circumstances, which puts the Mom firmly in the category of blithering moron. She locks staff out of the house on 3 different occasions. Ha ha so funny. So she's petty to boot. Unattractive and unkind-definitely two traits everybody wants in housefold staff right? Gimme a break.....She drives two other maids to leave by her nastiness but still the family adores her. The final staff member hired to help her she inexplicably bonds with, and all the problems are fixed because she starts going for evening jogs. This is what passed for a plot in this ridiculous drama from Chile. All of the children are little snobs living a life of leisure so there's no character development there. The father apparently affords this lovely home with a swimming pool by building model ships, then whines like a 4 year old when one gets broken. There's no depth to this film. No study of mental illness which she clearly has. It didn't go anywhere and failed to entertain or to make me think. A very bland movie about an uninteresting subject. The only likeable character in the movie is the first young maid that gets hired from Peru. The nudity on screen is all pointless and as frivolous as the rest of the film. Mundane dialogue. Just a sad effort overall....

La Nana is a successful psychological film that focuses on the life of Raquel, who has been serving as a servant to a wealthy family with four children for more than 20 years, but soon becomes an authority as if she is not a maid but a lady of the house. The film with the character Raquel, played by Catalina Saavedra, who displayed a very strong acting; She focuses on the story of a female character who is separated from her family for years and is so obsessed that she is jealous of a second maid brought home when she suffers from health problems, but is so unbalanced that her devotion and love grows in her hands and becomes jealous of the daughter of the house. La Nana; With the character of the lady of the house, who was under the influence of Raquel and could not resist her despite all her dangerous misdemeanors, it reminds us profusely of Hegel's slave-master dialectic. On the other hand, the audience also sees that the human and loving side within him emerges when the last of the servants who were brought home but whom Raquel had somehow removed from the house showed some affection to him. At this point, all the factors that make Raquel become Raquel are questioned and the antipathy felt towards her from the very beginning suddenly turns into sympathy. The film that seems to tell an ordinary maid story; It is one of the hidden treasures with its realistic expression without exaggeration, its psychological infrastructure successfully fictionalized and especially the extremely impressive acting of Catalina Saavedra.