(courtesy IMDb)
This may be news to the producers of many a Hollywood blockbuster – this reviewer loves many of them but subtle they are not – but there is real power in telling an emotionally impactful story quietly.
While the temptation, especially in our cliffhanger-addicted, streaming algorithm modern digital age is to ramp up the intensity and the noise and the dramatic twist, there’s something truly impactful about simply letting events play out in almost real time without frenetic hyperbole muddying the narrative waters.
How true that is is evidenced in A Quiet Maid (Calladita) – the Spanish title literally translates as “quiet” – where we meet and get to know a Colombian maid called Ana (Paula Grimaldo) who is working for an upper class family who are indolently spending the hot August months at their holiday home on the Costa Brava on Spain’s north-east coast.
Ana is adept, even after just three months in the job at keeping a low profile and getting her work done, with “Mmhmm” her standard response to just about everything, especially when she is imperiously instructed in what to do and how to do by her employers, Andrea (Ariadna Gil) and Pedro (Luis Bermejo).
She knows she just needs to keep her head down, the driving priority for her being to keep the money, low though it may be, rolling in so she can fund her younger sister’s medical studies back in Colombia.
At first, everything seems warm and convivial and though she is expected to wait on Pedro and Andrea, and their grown children, Jacobo (Pol Hermoso) and Claudia (Violeta Rodríguez), hand and foot, they are polite and they seem genuinely appreciative of all the work she does.
And just as well, because her workload is considerable.
She cooks, she cleans, she helps get ready for major functions – Andrea is an art dealer and loves to hold court at events with artists and moneyed buyers –
OOOO