The Chambermaid

MOVIE #1,058 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 07.11.23 On today's TWO FOR TUESDAYS, I watched two Mexican movies that came out within a year of each other and there’s one interesting, if not explicit parallel: where Midnight Family is a documentary that strives to feel cinematic, The Chambermaid is a drama that strives for such realness that I mistook it for a doc when it began (in the sense that all/most slow burn cinema wants to achieve this effect on some level). I enjoyed this film a little bit more, but both are solid to good. Nothing much at all happens in The Chambermaid, a movie about a — you guessed it — hotel maid who works at a very upscale establishment in Mexico City. But good lord does it capture the struggle and world-crushing pain that such a gig can induce. Gabriela Cartol in the titular lead is excellent and the film, by first time feature director Lila Avilés, is presented plainly but beautifully.

The contrast between the clean, elegant rooms and the cold, behind-the-scenes depths of the hotel is stark and paints a picture by itself, without any words.

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The Chambermaid (Spanish: La camarista) is a 2018 Mexican drama film directed by Lila Avilés. It was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. Working at an upscale Mexican hotel, a maid seeks to find her place in the world. It was released on September 8, 2018.