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The Chambermaid review: Assured and haunting feature debut explores the human cost of luxury living

4 stars

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The Chambermaid

The Chambermaid

The Chambermaid

Paul Whitington

This assured and haunting feature debut from Mexican actor Lila Aviles explores the human cost of luxury living.

Eva (the wonderfully subtle Gabriela Cartol) is a maid at a shimmering and vaguely antiseptic five star Mexico City hotel.

Her work is almost mesmerising in its banality, and her conscientiousness earns her little respect: the guests treat her as though she’s a slave, or a chair, behaving appallingly because the room rates give them the right.

Eva’s only 24, and is taking an adult education class, but for all her doggedness and ambition, you feel her hard life is never going to get any easier.

It’s a beautiful, melancholy film, and makes you begin to wonder if Karl Marx didn’t have a point.

 

(No cert, IFI, 102mins)

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Bird on the wire: Marianne Ihlen, with her son Axel and, seated beside them, Leonard Cohen, in Hydra, Greece in 1960

Bird on the wire: Marianne Ihlen, with her son Axel and, seated beside them, Leonard Cohen, in Hydra, Greece in 1960

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