This past weekend I finally got to sit down and watch via Netflix, Sebastian Silva’s award winning film, la Nana, about a maid in an upper middle class Chilean household and her relationship with the family she works for, her own family, others and herself. Before I get into the nitty gritty here’s a preview.

Warning, there will be spoilers so if you haven’t seen the movie and want to be surprised, stop reading.

La Nana introduces us to Raquel,played convincingly by Catalina Saavedra, a maid with the Valdez family for 23 years who is facing what seems to be a crisis regarding her role in the household and in the world at large. The crisis, which appears at the same time as an unnumbered birthday, is impacting her physically, manifesting in migraine headaches and fainting spells. The mother, Pilar, suggests getting Raquel some help, in the form of another household worker, a suggestion, that despite Raquel’s objections, comes true.

Raquel makes life for those brought in to help her hell, by locking them out of the house and ritually disinfecting the bathtub after they bathe. Only one, Lucy, played by Mariana Loyol, takes the “hazing” in stride, one-upping being locked out of the house by sun bathing topless on the front lawn and recognizing Raquel’s after shower tub cleaning as a sign of internal struggles. “What have they done to you?” Lucy tearfully asks Raquel after she pulls the establish nana away from the tub and embraces her.

For what appears to be the first time since working inside the Valdez household, Raquel finds a friend and ally in Lucy. Lucy invites Raquel to spend Christmas with her family, instead of with the Valdez’s and Raquel is confronted with how her role as a domestic worker has distanced her from her own family and from herself. It is over this Christmas holiday in the north of Chile with Lucy’s family, that Raquel has what is portrayed as her first sexual experience with a man.

The film has been classified as a drama and as a black comedy even. Given my feelings at the end of the film, I would lean towards the side of drama. The film left me feeling very sad. The film was a series of mundane household occurrences that pointed out the limbo the domestic worker finds herself in. I almost wish the film started earlier or gave us a glimpse of what Raquel was like when she started working with the Valdez family. Was she scared to be so far from her family? What did she leave behind: family, lovers, dreams? We never see that. All we see is a woman who seems resigned to her position in life, serving another family and feeling threatened when she has to share that position.

Part of the sadness is the illusion created by Raquel herself, the illusion that the family loves her as if she were part of it. But she is a domestic worker. Even when the family offers her a birthday cake, they ring a bell to call her to the dining room. She has to please them or else her entire existence has been a waste.

For a film that deals with issues of class so strongly, not once was compensation mentioned in the film. Raquel, who lives with the family, as do the other household workers that come and go, is never seen getting paid. She is seen on her day off buying a sweater but in the scene where the Valdez family takes a semi-conscious Raquel to the hospital, I couldn’t help but wonder if she had insurance, if she would be expected to pay the medical bills or if the Valdez family would. Raquel’s existence struck me as akin to being a kept woman, kept poorly and eating alone so that she could make sandwiches for the kids, but kept none the less.

Silva, who in interviews has said that the characters in the film are based on his own experiences growing up in Santiago de Chile with maids, invited 300 local domestic workers to the premiere.

“It was very vocal. I’ve never been to a screening like that in my life. The Q&A was awesome. Many noted that the only time their job is noticed is when it’s not done – it’s just taken for granted.” Silva continued saying that the film’s release spawned domestic servant related programming on local networks, and said the feature divided critics at home, with some saying it lacked an outwardly political focus.

Maybe that’s what left me uneasy after the film too. I couldn’t tell if this was a bourgeois man remembering his childhood nana with affection or disaffected sadness. Like : “Imagine if this was your shitty ass lot in life”.

The film’s ending is supposed to make the viewer feel good, like Raquel will be ok. Pero I wish that instead of just jogging around the block, I wished she would have joined a union or gone to a march instead.