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100The Maid would have been worthwhile just as a showcase both for good acting and for the director's virtuosity. But the movie's ultimate virtue is its humanity.
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100As played by the captivating Mariana Loyola, Lucy is a life force, cut from similar cloth as the perky schoolteacher of Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky": unsinkable, unswervable and more than a little irreverent.
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100It's funny--bleakly, blackly so at times, but also tenderly funny with flashes of genuine compassion. The Maid is among the best films I've seen this year.
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91Raquel's devotion to her employer is barbed with hatred, need, and an insecurity she manifests through constant tiny acts of sabotage that would be funny if they weren't also so chilling -- bordering on psychotic.
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This is strikingly talented cinema from a notable international filmmaker.
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In a remarkable performance that won her a special award from the world cinema jury at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Chilean television vet Saavedra goes through one of the most uncanny psychophysical transformations I've ever seen in a movie without the benefit of obvious makeup or other prosthetics.
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90The Maid has that particular gift of leaving you off balance in the best possible way, and whenever something like that comes around you owe it to yourself to check it out.
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90Saavedra is riveting as a servant whose unblinking focus on her routine masks a profound loneliness.
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88Tone 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.
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85In the end what drives the movie is the hip young filmmaker's struggle with himself -- his showman's need to toy with our anxieties threatening to overwhelm his desire to make amends to all the servants he took for granted growing up.
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80Silva intends to keep us guessing, and it's fair to say he takes us in unexpected directions. But don't expect any flashy Hollywood twists. The surprises come from Catalina Saavedra's intense lead performance.
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80Saavedra, in an incredibly vanity-free performance, never shies away from Raquel's darkest edges and still forces us to empathize with the frustrations and stunted loneliness of a life lived in servants' quarters.
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80At its midpoint, the film could go either way: toward "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" psychosis or something more hopeful and humanistic. It's a testament to Saavedra's tough performance that even with a happy ending, you wouldn't want to leave her with your kids.
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80It takes Mr. Silva a while to finish his story, but the ending of The Maid is so intelligently handled and so generously and honestly conceived, it proves well worth the wait.
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80The Maid may turn mostly on issues of housework, but it never feels trivial, because Silva is so skillful in exposing the alliances and levers of power inside the household.
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75Silva's script has the ring of truth, not surprising since he based it on real-life experiences. He even shot most of the scenes in his own family's house.
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75Silva expertly maintains the tension, asking the audience to interpret Raquel's bizarro behavior. His diagnosis is a pleasant surprise.
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75It's rooted in observed reality and idiosyncratic individuals. It's possible, Silva is saying, to live among people and still be terribly, crushingly isolated.
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75A little gem of social realism that makes up in polish what it lacks in consistency.
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75The kind of working-class, character-driven drama that few American directors would dare to make. It's tough and unsentimental, with a documentary aesthetic that belies the craft of the calibrated tension.
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75The film is somewhat sketch-like in its episodes and in placing Raquel within a larger world. But it's very surefooted when it stays close in on her and her universe of chores, rituals and fears.
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75Even at its most upbeat, The Maid is something of a tragedy.
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67An intriguing psychological study that, more or less, leaves out the psychology and presents us with surface behavior.
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67As it is, The Maid is a study of a character who rarely emerges from the opaque end of the spectrum.
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User score distribution:
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Mixed: 0 out of 6
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Negative: 0 out of 6
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LindaN.10
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10
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JohnV10