The Maid
Directed by Sebastian Silva. Written by Sebastian Silva and Pedro Peirano. With Catalina Saavedra, Claudia Celedon, Alejandro Goic, Andrea Garcia-Huidobro, and Mariana Loyola. (NR)
From the start of The Maid, when a Chilean family attempts to celebrate the birthday of their longtime housekeeper, an uneasy tension rules. The awkward, forced celebration is painful to watch—maid Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) is practically dragged from the kitchen by the family she works for, who after living with Raquel for over two decades have trouble negotiating the boundaries between family and employees.
And it's in name only that Raquel works for the Valdez family; indeed she is the ruler of the house, ignoring any instruction she deems ill-advised or beneath her station. Even the parents defer to her rather than cause friction; when daughter Camila butts heads with Raquel, her mother darts from the room, pretending not to hear. When father Mundo isn't sneaking off to play golf he's ensconced in his study, at work on a model ship's tiny rigging. It's easier, it seems, than confronting the messy emotions that come with paying someone to do the chores you don't want to do yourself.
In a passive-aggressive attempt to lift Raquel's spirits, the family hires a second maid—a move she sees as a first step toward open revolt. Her increasingly erratic behavior would be funny if it weren't so spiteful, but it gets so over the top that it's hard to believe any family would overlook it. For a time the film teeters on becoming a revamped Fatal Attraction, then the darkest Three Stooges story ever, before finally settling into a more standard story of redemption, or at least the possibility of it.
But though the story doesn't surprise, Catalina Saavedra makes it worthwhile. Her Raquel is viscerally unpleasant, an unbalanced woman on the verge of breakdown, and the performance is both entrancing and repulsive (that's a compliment). When she finally begins to accept that someone in her world might simply want to be her friend, it's a little heartbreaking to see just how bright her face can be.
Coco Before Chanel
Directed by Anne Fontaine. Written by Anne Fontaine and Camille Fontaine, based on the book by Edmonde Charles-Roux. With Audrey Tatou, Beno?t Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain, and Emmanuelle Devos.
One of the pleasures of Coco Before Chanel comes in the odd realization that its leading lady—the effervescent French star Audrey Tatou—doesn't shine. Tatou is good as the iconic fashion designer, but we've grown so used to the roles that play up her considerable natural charm (Amelie above all) that it's a welcome change to find her playing a woman who is guarded, self-centered and full of naked ambition. "You want," someone tells her, "but you don't know what."
Gabrielle Chanel—whose sobriquet Coco came from the title of a saloon song she performed as part of a singing sisters act—had reason to be hard. Orphaned at an early age, she came up through society by hitching her wagon to wealthy men and using their desire as a way to propel her career and elevate her social standing. One of them was ?tienne Balsan (Beno?t Poelvoorde), a well-heeled gadabout who sports a robe decorated with his beloved horses; when Coco arrives unannounced at his estate, he gives her a room, and invites himself in.
There she begins to make a name for herself both as a seamstress and milliner whose creations capture the fancy of Balsan's coterie, and as a plainspoken woman with a dangerous streak. She also catches the eye of Arthur "Boy" Capel (Alessandro Nivola), an English businessman who understands Coco as few have before. Though never her husband—famously, Chanel never married—Capel was the closest Chanel came to a lasting love, and Nivola and Tatou share real chemistry in their scenes together.
But if Chanel's early life was worth recounting, one can't help but think that her second act would be even more so. The film only touches on her groundbreaking later career, and while the title makes it very clear what we're in for, it still feels a bit incomplete. (It also completely overlooks her controversial ties to the Nazis during the occupation of Paris; with Tatou also the face of the Chanel no.5 advertising campaign, that part of the story would likely raise some unwelcome questions.) As it is, it remains a remarkable tale of triumph tempered by tragedy and filled with small surprises—not the least of which hints at a surprising source of Chanel's fashion inspiration.
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Also this week: The elephant in the room this week is The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the second film in the ongoing hormonal vampire series. Part modern gothic, part Sweet Valley High, it's a juggernaut that needs no help from this column. But while it's currently taking up no less than three screens at Hadley's Cinemark Theater, a couple of smaller films—in relation to Twilight, they're all smaller—also opened this past weekend, and could provide options for parents eager to escape the shrieks and giggles.
For the younger crowd (and fun-loving parents) there's Planet 51, a new animated film starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as an astronaut who lands on the titular planet ready to claim it in the name of mankind. Instead, he finds a thriving alien culture that bears a striking similarity to 1950s suburban America. Written by Joe Stillman—the scribe behind Shrek—the story is chockablock with pop culture and sci-fi references, with everything from Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey to Terminator and the Star Wars series finding its way into the script.
Also at Cinemark is The Blind Side, a crowd-pleaser that tells the touching, true story of pro footballer Michael Oher. Born into poverty, the oversize Oher led an early life of stoic desperation—the kid everyone called "Big Mike" would trek to the high school during winter storms just because the gym had heat. His life began to turn around when headstrong Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock) and her ex-jock husband Sean (Tim McGraw) took him in and helped him channel his natural talent for the game. Interested filmgoers should track down the 2006 article "The Ballad of Big Mike," written for the New York Times by Michael Lewis, who authored the book on which the film is based.
At midnight on Saturday, Pleasant Street Theater wraps up its NOIRvember film series with The Hitch-Hiker, Ida Lupino's 1953 thriller. Lupino, best known as an actress, also flourished as a director, helming everything from Gilligan's Island to The Twilight Zone. Her films tended to be darker affairs, and in The Hitch-Hiker she casts William Talman as a serial killer who gets picked up by two fishing buddies. So effective is Talman—or so goes the rumor—that once while stopped at a traffic light, a fellow motorist, on confirming that Talman did indeed play the hitchhiker, left his car, walked over to the actor and slapped him in the face.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com
