The Maid

For more than 20 years, Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) has worked as the hired help for an upper-class Santiago family, whom she has served with the dedication of a novitiate. But her labors have taken their Sisyphean toll as she celebrates her 41st birthday. So the family proposes hiring a second maid to relieve Raquel of some responsibilities. This she takes as a declaration of war. One by one, the reinforcements arrive, only to brush up against the full force of the passive-aggressive Raquel, until perky Lucy (Mariana Loyola) shows up on the scene and proves immune to Raquel’s offensives or, perhaps, is a little bit crazy herself. The Remains of the Day as reimagined by a budding Luis Buñuel (30-year-old director Sebastián Silva), The Maid is neither a crude lampoon of domestic servitude nor a knee-jerk skewering of the bourgeoisie. Instead, it deftly shifts its point of view from downstairs to upstairs and back again, always keeping us off-balance as to where — if anywhere — its sympathies lie.