Bread and Roses

Maya crosses the Mexican border without papers and reaches Los Angeles. Her sister lives there and finds her work: cleaning office towers at night. The work is not given by the company but through a contractor; no insurance, no leave and pay below the minimum. To get the job part of the first wage goes to the supervisors. A union organiser gets into the building. Sam is trying to bring the workers together and talks with them secretly on the night shift. Some are willing, some are afraid; anyone who loses their job can be deported. Ken Loach directs. Pilar Padilla plays Maya and Adrien Brody plays Sam. The screenplay is by Paul Laverty. The movement behind the narrative is real; the organising campaign among cleaning workers in America was run in the nineties and won results. The film is among the few Loach made in America and belongs to his work outside Britain. The matter it works at is the cost of solidarity; some of those who join lose their jobs and the film does not hide it. There are non-professional actors in the cast and some were chosen from people doing the same work. Its hardest section is the argument between the two sisters; the elder explains why she did not join and the narrative allows her the point. Its limit is structure; some sections state the message directly and the characters carry functions. Who it is for: viewers who like social realist cinema and Loach's work. Who it is not for: the narrative is didactic, the characters carry a thesis, and the ending is partly optimistic.