by Joyce MarcelI knew I was going to say, "Best film of the festival" more than once. I've already said it for "Time to Die," and now I'd like to add the Argentine movie "A Live-In Maid," written and directed by Jorge Gaggero, to the mix.
I guess I like dramas.
You know how sometimes a film just leaves you warm inside, like you're smiling for no reason that relates to anything in your own life? And you wake up the next morning and you're still smiling? That's this film.
I'm not the only one in love with it. The Web site Rotten Tomatoes gave it 100 percent.
Actress Norma Aleandro plays Beba Pujol, a wealthy woman of a certain age, a drama queen, a manipulator, an elegant and stylish and careless woman, quite lovely and totally helpless, living in Buenos Aires in the time of Argentina's economic collapse.
She has a daughter living in Madrid who appears to be estranged, and either a brother or an ex-husband - I couldn't quite get the relationship - whom she sees and who helps her out occasionally.
And she has a live-in maid, Dora, played by Norma Argentina in her first film. Dora is stout, phlegmatic, stoic, hardworking and loyal. She's worked for Beba for 28 years.
Beba and Dora have a strictly mistress-maid relationship, but things change when Beba slowly starts becoming poor. She can't pay Dora, and by the time she's behind by seven months salary, Dora has to leave.
To salvage her pride, Beba cashes in all her gold and diamond jewelry to pay Dora before she goes. Then she tries to disappear into a bottle of whisky, while Dora, living in her own home in the country with a cheating live-in boyfriend, tries to forget her.
But the women's bond is too strong either of them to deny.
From IMDb: "Both Beba and Dora are endearingly flawed - the former supercilious and unyielding, the latter torn between contempt and sympathy for her former boss. Argentina is gruffly impressive as the emotionally-contained maid, while Aleandro's monstrous but piteous snob is an equally sharp portrayal. In Gaggero's measured telling, the pair's not-quite-friendship rings all the more true for being revealed with unsentimental compassion."
And from Rotten Tomatoes: "Gaggero not only draws out such nuances from the two women but illustrates the complexities of their friendship with carefully constructed cinematography."
I won't spoil the ending, but if you see the film, you can guess how it's going to come out even before it is halfway over. And it's a lovely, true and just ending.
The movie moves slowly. We read the story through the faces of the actors, not through dialog. We feel what they feel. We love them in our own, individual way.
I loved this movie. It's playing again tomorrow, Saturday, at the Latchis at 4 p.m.
By the way, I took Thursday off to reconnect with my own life. Oddly enough, it's still there, although my husband said, "I wish you would come back, already."
How did I spend my night off? Watching "Law & Order" reruns on TV, as usual.
But today is Friday, and if this past week has been a movie sprint, the next three days are the marathon.
Stay tuned. Or come out and see some of the films. Enjoy this rich experience. It won't last too much longer. The festival is over on Sunday.
1 comment:
Joyce, you are one of the great women, but not just on the screen for an hour, but here in Brattleboro all the time. Which is why it's easy to take you for granted. Reading your work is always a joy and an inspiration; maybe somebody will make the movie "Joyce" that we will see at the WFF some day.
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