The Chambermaid

La Camarista (The Chambermaid, 2019) by mexican director Lila Avilés is a film that shows a level of freedom within the confines of a restricted budget that is just mindblowing.

If you read the rest of the reviews around here you will get a sense of the style it's shot: the camera, using beautiful cinematography, is a passive witness to a hotel chambermaid's daily routine. There is no spectacularity, not an earthquake to shatter the main character, she's never accused of stealing stuff... There's no dramatic trigger to turn this story into a powerhouse drama. Instead, Avilés chooses, wisely, to dwell on her star's nuanced but effective performance. Gabriela Cartol's Evelina (the maid in the title) is a shy, dreamy and sometimes annoying woman. A real person instead of a stereotype. We're not here to lament her poverty, but to join her daily conversations, her momentary daydreaming, her spirit breaking apart or becoming stronger.

Avilés is not interested on bringing disaster into her characters' lives. She doesn't want them to unravel, instead we're drawn into this colossal universe of a big city hotel and breaks into its small spaces and corners, revealing beauty in routine.

An overall enjoyable experience for audiences who relish subtlety, La Camarista manages to feel as a refreshing take on a cliché subject.

I rather liked this film. Nothing happens in it that could be said to constitute a plot in the classical sense, but that is the point. The protagonist leads a desultory life, working only to survive and lacking any real means for freeing herself from the daily grind. Her relationships to her co-workers and the people whom she serves are temporary and devoid of any lasting significance. In some ways, her situation reflects that of many workers at every stratum of society. The difference is that she does not have very many options available and will probably continue to clean rooms until the day she dies.

I genuinely felt bad for the maid in this film, but I feel even more bad for the fact that I wasted an hour and forty minutes watching an unfocused and unguided film that all could have been trimmed down to a twenty minute short film. The Chambermaid could basically be summed up like this: woman struggles in her job as a hotel maid, and while attempting to get her GED, she continuously suffers from people overlooking her and being an outcast in society. Yes, that sounds all fine and dandy, but again, these freaking indie films just love showing main characters walking around for what seems like hours.

The main character cleans. Then she walks down the hall. She stares at random objects. She cleans some blankets. She goes to GED classes. She speaks one sentence. Repeat. It gets extremely boring and repetitive.

I will say that I was enlightened with getting an insight into the struggles of what Mexican maids have to go through, especially in their struggle to rank up in their crummy job, but that does not make this film good. The main character was horribly developed and literally had no character, so how am I supposed to really care? I sympathize with maids, but I do not sympathize with her.

All in all, this was a boring film that really needs a trim of about an hour. Get rid of GED crap. Get rid of phone calls to home. Get rid of boring shots of her cleaning for half of the runtime, and just trim it to like a quarter. Maybe focus more on the people, like the young woman with the child, who gave a bit of attention to our main character.

Watch the movie if you like to watch people clean or if you like watching people walk around while looking sad.

For over an hour and a half, I watched the daily routine of a chambermaid at a posh Mexico City hotel, and I wasn't the bit bored. In writer-director Lila Aviles's The Chambermaid, Eve (Gabriela Cartol) experiences with us through the magic of the camera a life as a maid in a hotel with small events that take her through aspiration, eroticism, and disappointment.

Aviles's camera moves very little as it lets Cartol's expressive face tell us about the highs and lows of a blue-collar mom working for her baby and her own social elevation. Not only is she likeable, but she is admirable for the way she does her very best at housekeeping and improving her lot in life with evening school.

Each fold of a sheet or electroshock titillation from co-worker Minitoy (Teresa Sanchez) lets us in to her yearnings and her escapes. When we watch her perform an erotic act for a window washer admirer, we see a 24-year old woman with passions that go beyond her staid working life. Her emergence into an extrovert in her evening class is, like her, slow but sure as she grows into independence and extroversion.

What matters here is that an unexemplary life has yearnings and romance that are hidden to everyone but the camera, revealing a woman of many layers and good intentions, buffeted by fate and her own kindnesses from her desires and ambitions. As in Alfonse Cuaron's Roma, the servant has the insight, but unlike Roma, The Chambermaid is bereft of nostalgia and dominated by the quotidian forces that define modern life, rich or poor.

Here is a winning effort from a first-time filmmaker and a memorable slice of life sure to inform how we see housekeeping in whatever hotel we visit, be it Mexico City, London, or any other great city that hides the lives of the working poor.

The Chambermaid is a beautifully quiet look at a hotel housekeeper's daily existence. The film's narrative line is simple, yet the complexity of Gabriel Cartol's lead performance was stunning.

Anyone that has worked a menial or underappreciated job will appreciate the frustrating workplace dynamics where schmoozers who blow their own horn sometimes get ahead of quiet hardworking people.

In addition the film maker's symbolism of red and white shown in parallel construction was also striking.