Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Miguel Faus
Starring: Paula Grimaldo, Ariadna Gil, Pol Hermoso, Luis Bermejo Nany Tovar
Writer/director Miguel Faus opens his feature
debut, The Quiet Maid, with a striking shot of the film's title character, Colombian maid Ana
(Paula Grimaldo), cleaning a window. The camera is positioned in a
way that makes it seem as though Ana is breaking the fourth wall and
cleaning the very screen through which we're watching the movie. As a
maid, Ana's job is to be invisible, to be neither seen nor heard, but from
the very first shot she's making her presence felt.
Having impressed her employers - a wealthy Barcelona family who have made
their fortune through art dealing - Ana is brought to their summer home on
the Catalan coast. The family matriarch, Andrea (Ariadna Gil), lays
out her expectations of Ana. In exchange for working tirelessly seven days
a week over the summer, Ana will be rewarded by Andrea and her husband
Pedro (Luis Bermojo) using their influence to pull strings and have
the Colombian fast-tracked for a Spanish visa. It seems like a dubious
promise, but Ana accepts it. As an illegal worker she doesn't have many
options, and she's desperate to earn enough money to send her younger
sister to college back in Colombia.
Ana does what's expected of her. She keeps her head down and stays out of
the family's way unless called upon. She's treated as though she's
invisible by her employers, who speak about her when she's clearly in
earshot. The family's wannabe influencer daughter Claudia (Violeta Rodriguez) has no problem being naked in Ana's presence, as though she were a
family pet rather than a human who might feel uncomfortable with such
intimacy. Their son, Jacobo (Pol Hermoso), is friendly towards Ana,
but his attention grows increasingly sinister (making the awful Jacobo a
crypto-bro is deliciously ironic, as the movie was funded through NFT
sales).
Ana's routine is rocked when she's befriended by Gisela (Nany Tovar), a fellow Colombian who works as a maid for a neighbouring family. In
contrast to the servile Ana, Gisela is rebellious, constantly mocking
their wealthy Spanish employers. It's not long before she's sneaking Ana
out for late night parties on a nearby beach. The resulting hangovers
affect Ana's work, which doesn't go unnoticed by an increasingly
suspicious Andrea. Coupled with Pedro's determination to poison the stray
cat Ana has befriended, this causes the maid to stage a quiet revolution
against her employers.
The Quiet Maid is a class conflict drama that gradually morphs into something of a
heist thriller. We spend the first half of the movie observing Ana at work
in a manner not unlike Lila Avilés' similarly themed Mexican drama The Chambermaid. Much of the film plays out in wide shots, with Ana viewed at a remove,
but every now and then Faus will cut to a close-up that rests on Ana's
face. In these shots we can see the cogs turning in her mind as she
silently assesses her situation and begins to formulate plots. On
paper The Quiet Maid has a similar narrative to Saltburn, that of a wealthy family infiltrated by someone plotting against them
in their midst, but it couldn't be more different in execution. The
bombastic excess of Saltburn is replaced here by quiet, studied filmmaking, a show, don't tell
approach from Faus that requires the audience to pay attention less to
what's being said and more to what's being considered. It requires a
strong performer to pull it off, and Grimaldo, who played the same role
for Faus in his earlier short Calladita, is more than up to the task. Over the course of the film she evolves
from a quiet mouse to a femme fatale, and when she turns full-on slinky
dress seductress in the final act it's an impressively organic progression
from the shrewish servant we were initially introduced to.
Faus's film also has much in common with Joseph Losey's British class war
classic The Servant, with Hermoso's performance as the spoilt but unhappy Jacobo not unlike
that of James Fox. The key distinction is that unlike Dirk Bogarde's
devious butler, who plots his employer's downfall from the start, Ana
grows into the role of usurper, a reaction to her treatment at the hands
of her employers, which ranges from patronising to abusive. It's
invigorating to watch Ana transform from a dutiful slave to a class
warrior, and by the time we realise the details of her plan we're fully
rooting for her to pull it off. For anyone who has had to bite their
tongue or clench their fist for the sake of keeping a job they can't
afford to lose, Ana is a protagonist to get behind. Not all heroes wear
capes; some wear aprons.
