Event

Live-in Maid, Sunday Schmooze

Sunday Schmooze
Sunday, February 10 @ 11am
Hot Bagels @ 10am

Guest Speaker: Vic Skolnick, CAC Co-director

(Also screening Monday, February 11 @ 7:30pm)

Live-in Maid is an intimate account of two dissimilar Argentinean women that takes place during the economic meltdown of 2001 in Buenos Aires. Norma Aleandro, the grande dame of Latin American Cinema, plays Beba Pujol, a spoiled cosmetics sales-woman who has lived with Dora (Norma Argentina), her humble servant, for nearly thirty years. Of course, there is mistress-servant tension in this relationship because they have such different personalities. Beba is in denial of the countrys impending crisis and how it will ultimately limit her elegant lifestyle. She drinks away her worries while Dora nurses her emotional and physical wounds. However, eventually the whisky and cash stop flowing. In addition to losing these material comforts, Beba truly laments that she can no longer afford to keep Dora as her caretaker. Dora is more realistic and ready to accept the inevitable changes. She doesnt hesitate to leave Beba to find a new job. However, this servant also remains a loyal companion with her former master. Beba and Dora may no longer have a financial arrangement, but their emerging friendship will endure. Although the drama of Argentinas political crisis remains in the background, the sentimental emphasis of the story is no less real and valuable to our perception of the society that it depicts. Live-In Maid teaches us about the true value of relationships and how they are complicated by social-class boundaries. Matthew Garklavs

Argentina; 2004; 85 min.; color
Spanish with English subtitles