At what point does personal memory and experience get in the way of critical observation? It’s a question that popped into my mind during a screening of Live-in Maid, which opened today at Film Forum. Argentinian director Jorge Gaggero’s debut feature is a small picture tackling a big subject: the class struggle in Argentina. Norma Aleandro plays Beba, a recent upper class divorcee who struggles to stay within her non-existent budget and survives in part by pawning personal items. She refuses to cut-back, and the one item she believes she owns but couldn’t (nor wouldn’t) ever pawn is her maid, Dora (Norma Argentina). Beba drinks … a lot; and Dora is always there to clean-up after her. Beba yells; Dora listens. That is, until Dora decides she can’t take it anymore and after 30 years with the same family, she quits.
The plot of Live-in Maid is almost secondary. The focus of the film is on the characters of these two women and, in particular, their relationship with each other. Beba is disturbed by the fact that her daughter — living abroad in Madrid — rarely calls, and yet Beba acts like a spoiled kid herself, expecting Dora to mother her. While Dora spends much of the week living in a small, sparse room off the kitchen, she does have her own home with her partner Miguel, and when she wants to take a scheduled day off to go buy flooring for their little house, Beba won’t allow it because its their turn to host the ladies for cards. Meanwhile, Beba hasn’t paid Dora in several months but expects her to be there always.
Once they’re apart, however, they both realize how much they need each other. In fact, what we see in Live-in Maid is an odd but fascinating co-dependency. When Dora is around Miguel all the time, she notices that not all of Beba’s criticisms about him are invalid. When Beba no longer has Dora to complain to, she realizes how well she had it before; how nobody else cares to listen to her or how she really now needs to take care of herself. The epiphany they each have is that their lives outside the relationship they have with each other is relatively empty, and in reality, they are each other’s best friend.
Without the performances by Aleandro and Argentina (the woman who plays Dora; not the country), the film certainly wouldn’t work whatsoever. The performances are both worth at least a brief note. Aleandro (an Oscar nominee for the 1987 Luis Mandoki film Gaby, A True Story) perfectly depicts all the varied elements of Beba’s personality, making her at times hateful but at other times utterly empathetic. Her performance is exactly what you’d expect from a talented veteran actor. I was surprised to learn, however, that Argentina (the woman who plays Dora, not the country) was acting in her first film, and until she auditioned for Live-in Maid in 2003 had spent much of the previous 20 years as a traffic cop and a housekeeper! Research, you say? There’s a huge difference between being a housekeeper and being able to play a housekeeper, and if you ever need proof that those who can do can’t necessarily act, just tune in to HBO’s John From Cincinnati; it won’t take you long to figure out which two “actors” are really just surfers. The obvious point being, major kudos to both Norma’s, but particularly the novice Argentina who’s understated performance is ultimately what really brings everything together.
Both characters, particularly Beba, go through a tremendous amount of growth by the time we reach the film’s conclusion. And while Beba’s journey is most certainly that of your standard protagonist, arriving at a point where the audience should like her much more at the end than the beginning. But what is truly fascinating to me about this relationship is the question it presents: can these two women truly ever be friends? Can the power and class struggle which is ingrained in them due to their 30 years together ever put them on an equal plane? Will Dora ever be able to address Beba by her first name? Will Beba ever understand why maybe she should call before showing up with storage items at Dora’s, even if she thinks that she’s being generous in giving them to her?
At the beginning of this post, I mentioned “personal memory and experience.” No, I have never been a rich divorcee nor a live-in maid, however my grandmother is a very well-off widow, and her housekeeper — a wonderful and caring woman named Emma — lived with her and my late grandfather for nearly half-a-century. She was a part of our family the entire time I was growing up, and to a degree, she continues to be now. My father’s youngest sibling was in many ways raised by her, and she has attended many, if not all, of our major family events. After my grandfather passed away over a decade ago, she and my grandmother remained in their Nob Hill apartment, eating breakfast together every day and just being a comfortable presence for the other. When my grandmother decided that the apartment was just too big for her and she wanted to move into a seniors community, it was time for them to part, and while neither of them will likely talk about it in this manner, they miss living together. Emma now lives with her daughter in Austin, TX, and many in my family keep in touch with her. And yet, both my grandmother and Emma, in their new situations with people around them, probably feel more lonely than they ever did together. But even more so, Emma never stopped calling my grandmother Mrs. Dobbs.
Beba and Dora’s relationship, like my grandmother’s and her housekeeper’s, is in reality so complex that it can’t be looked at as a simple friendship even though the women care for each other deeply and personally. It’s a barrier created by a social and class structure that by the end of the film actually seems to no longer exist, and yet, it’s still there. In the press notes, Gaggero states:
Through the story, I tried to address my own concerns about the Argentine economic and cultural crisis and to determine whether such a huge collapse as the one Argentina has seen in the last few years may trigger a change or some kind of liberating force in personal relationships.
I’d be curious myself as to whether a huge economic change throughout a society would change these dynamics, but I don’t expect they would, and I don’t believe that ultimately Gaggero shows them doing so in the film. A better understanding of an interaction, maybe. But much as a son or daughter will always be a parent’s child or a mentor or boss will always hold an eye of authority or a present a guiding hand to one who follows, it seems that a live-in maid will in some form always be just that, even while simply sipping tea on a patio.
Gaggero certainly succeeded in what he also claims to be one of his goals: “I want audiences to relate to these concerns and incorporate their own experiences, and to incite them to look inside and search for an answer.” I don’t know that I found an answer, but I certainly managed to relate. At the end of the day, sometimes you can’t really ask for any more, and that’s good filmmaking.
Out of Focus 