Maids

A Brazilian film set in São Paulo. Five women tell their stories. All of them are domestic workers. The narrative is built on speaking straight to camera. The women sit in a chair and tell their own histories. Then those histories are dramatised. The first came from the north. She was given to a household as a small child and worked without wages. The second grew up in the house she worked in. She played with the owners' children but did not sit at the table. The third became pregnant. She was dismissed. The fourth lived with a family for years. The woman of the house counts her as family; but her room is a store and her wage is low. The fifth left the work. She started her own business. From there the film weaves the lines together. The common point is always the same: the maid's room. A small room at the back of the flat, next to the kitchen; without a window or with one. The narrative returns to that room again and again. What the narrative is interested in is not work but a line: its idea is that these women are kept inside the family but not of it, and that the line is never discussed. Affection and hierarchy exist at once. The employers love them and do not sit in the same room. The narrative does not draw the employers as monsters. That is its hardest quality. All the women describe the work. How many hours, how many rooms, how many people. There is the matter of migration too. All of them came from somewhere else. The structure sits between documentary and fiction. The speakers are actors but the text came from real interviews. Fernando Meirelles made this before his first big production and the method comes from here: real locations, natural light, and non-professional actors. He directed it with Nando Olival. Graziella Moretto, Olívia Araújo, Lena Roque, Renata Melo and Cláudia Missura are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Brazilian cinema and narratives built on class. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a single story; the narrative splits five ways and takes none of them all the way.