The Cham­ber­maid

Eve dreams of the 42^nd floor. As a dili­gent cham­ber­maid in one of Mex­i­co City’s plush­est hotels, she keeps her­self to her­self, all with a view to scor­ing a pro­mo­tion that will allow her to tidy the tem­po­rary liv­ing spaces of the monied elite. Exact­ing­ly played as an anx­i­ety-prone wall­flower by Gabriela Car­tol, Eve bud­dies up to her unnec­es­sar­i­ly bossy line man­ag­er, break­ing her back to ful­fil even the most unrea­son­able of demands.

There’s extra cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties too, as a dip­py moth­er coerces Eve into look­ing after her new­born while she dash­es into the show­er, or there’s the strange guy who requests extra sham­poo and toi­let paper and just sits glar­ing at his lap­top screen when they’re delivered.

Lila Avilés’ debut fea­ture is a bone-dry social satire that stealth­ily deliv­ers a com­men­tary on the emo­tion­al pit­falls of low wage labour. There is a debas­ing qual­i­ty to this type of work, and the writer/​director finds a way to explore the var­i­ous dai­ly degra­da­tions with­out mak­ing Eve as a blank can­vas for rit­u­al humiliation.

Avilés is less inter­est­ed in putting too fine a point on the upstairs/​downstairs nature of the job, though she’s great when it comes to pro­ject­ing the sti­fling geog­ra­phy of the build­ing. Aside from a quick vis­it to the rooftop heli­pad, the entire film is shot inside the hotel, and even while watch­ing you start to taste the recy­cled air and feel the inven­tible build-up of grime and sweat on Eve’s body.

Well craft­ed though it is, there’s a nag­ging sense that it’s not say­ing any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly rev­e­la­to­ry with regard to class exploita­tion and the dai­ly strug­gles of those toil­ing in the mod­ern ser­vice indus­try. And there are a few scenes in the lat­ter half where Eve’s new­found con­fi­dence plays out in what feel like unchar­ac­ter­is­tic demon­stra­tions of power.

Yet this is still a com­plete and intel­li­gent­ly exe­cut­ed work which leaves enough open for the view­er to fill in some intrigu­ing blanks.