FOREIGN FILMS: “The Maid” / “Gutland.” / “Homesick.” / “Barbara.”

“The Maid” (2009, Tubi) Chilean comedy-drama. For over 23 years, Raquel has worked as the maid for the Valdes family. She shows utmost loyalty and respect to her employers, Pilar and Edmundo. Etc etcetera.



       This movie won numerous awards since its premiere at the 25th Annual Sundance Film Festival. The story is ordinary; a typical family drama. But no one was hurt, nothing was hugely destroyed (except a tiny ship model) and no one was murdered. Not that sort. 

       But “The Maid” engaged me with interest and relish because of the stellar performance of Catalina Saavedra as Raquel, the maid. She didn't weep, scream, or break a plate. Her eyes did most of the “talking,” if you know what I mean. 🎥💻📽


“Gutland” (2017, Tubi) German/Luxembourgish drama thriller. A drifter escapes to a village in Luxembourg and decides to lay down some roots, but the seemingly idyllic country settlement may not be all that it appears to be. 


       Interesting and intriguing. Typical of most European indie features, “Gutland” is provocatively lascivious and palpably mysterious. 

       And the always fine Vicky Krieps is the other lead performer. Ms Krieps had me at hello with his breakout role in Paul Thomas Anderson's period gem “Phantom Thread” (2017). 🎥💻📽


“Homesick” (2015, Tubi) Norwegian drama. Plot: Charlotte and Henrik are half-siblings who grew up apart and end up falling in love after meeting for the first time in adulthood. This movie was one of three films shortlisted by Norway to be their submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards in 2016 but it lost out to “The Wave." 


       As Charlotte, Ine Marie Wilmann is ravishingly beautiful and a fine actress. But her scenes (mostly sex scenes) with Simon J. Berger (as Henrik), supposedly hot, lacked erotic seduction, irrelevant that that was the objective of those sequences. Disturbed tension or sexual hunger are missing although director Ann Sewitsky tried. Or did she?  🎭👎🎬


“Barbara” (2012, Amazon Prime) German drama. Plot: Set in East Germany in 1980, the plot centers on Dr. Barbara Wolff, a physician who is banished from her prestigious Berlin hospital and sent to a small rural clinic as punishment for applying for an exit visa to leave the country. Nina Hoss is Barbara. 


       Subtle, “quiet,” minimalist, and slow. But a piercingly disturbing statement of 1980s Germany before East and West reunited in 1990. Christian Petzold’s direction navigates the backward idyll of a rural town with its ills and vulnerabilities. Ms Hoss channeled the agony and hopes of the characters without screaming, weeping, or hurling fits into air. Yet we get the message. 🎥💻📽


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