★★★★★
'This is brilliantly confident film-making...a masterpiece of retraint.'
Simran Hans, The Observer
★★★★★
'It's a fabulous piece of cinema...Lila Avilés, director and co-writer (with Juan Marquéz), creates a symphony of textured silences.'
★★★★★
'This quiet profile of Mexico's working class is close to perfect.'
Tim Robey, The Daily Telegraph
★★★★★
The Chambermaid is every bit as “cinematic” as any Fast & Furious flick. No trace of the literary or theatrical remains in Avilés’s long takes and snatched, blank dialogue. The picture wraps a whole world around us. A perfect, cinematic sketch of a working life’ Donald Clarke, The Irish Times
★★★★
Film of the Week -' Lila Avilés is the Mexican actor-turned-director who makes a terrifically assured feature debut with The Chambermaid: an eerily atmospheric, poignant, disquieting movie about 21st-century luxury and the invisible servant class required to maintain it. It is a film to put alongside Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, in that it’s about the emotional cost of submission.'
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
★★★★ 'She doesn’t rescue anyone and she isn’t rescued. How refreshing....wry, delicately austere debut.'
Charlotte O'Sullivan, The Standard
Film of the Week - ‘Debut director Lila Avilés and lead actress Gabriel Cartol have crafted a subtle and compelling story about a young hotel worker, with wry humour and a keen understanding of exploitative labour economics. Lucrecia Martel’s regular sound designer Guido Berenblum creates a sonic poetry to accompany the visuals. Cartol is hugely impressive as the enterprising and unassuming Eve, with her keen smile and calm demeanour.’ Maria Delgado, Sight & Sound
'Maid in Mexico - ‘Bored of brain-dead summer blockbusters yet? Of course you are. So why not skip the multiplex, hit the art house and watch The Chambermaid, the critically adored latest from frighteningly talented young Mexican director Lila Avilés? ES Magazine (Magazine of the Year)
'The confident and hypnotic debut from the 37-year-old Mexican director Lila Avilés'
Ryan Gilbey,
The New Statesman
★★★★ ‘A poignant portrait of a have not, sensitively played by Cartol as a woman slowly sinking into non-existence.’ Ian Freer, EMPIRE magazine
★★★★‘Offering more questions than answers…but strong world-building and beautifully drawn characters’
Owen Richards,The i
‘A cool, calm and collected film about a subject often spoken about loudly and angrily.’ A young hotel maid is the captivating subject of Mexican filmmaker Lila Avilés’ bone-dry social satire.’ LITTLE WHITE LIES
★★★★
'Due to the mesmerising ways of Eve –its gentle and meticulous approach in shooting the daily drudge makes it a weirdly relaxing and fulfilling cinema experience'
Dan Carrier, Camen New Journal
Mark KERMODE BBC SOUNDS
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0006v91
he Chambermaid is a great analogy for modern Mexican and Latin American society – showcasing the severe disparity between the leisurely lifestyles of the affluent guests and the poor staff working ungodly hours to support and provide basic necessities for their families.
Rocio Cadena, SOUNDS & COLOURS
Read Interview with Lila Aviles
Aurelie Knecht, SOUNDS & COLOURS
★★★★‘Compelling and deeply resonant. ‘Acutely observed feature debut’FRANKLY MY DEAR
'Lila Avilés’s modest and miraculous first feature finds pathos and a hint of magic in the routines of a young hotel worker.'
...Quietly stunning...it is a work of closely observed workplace realism, but at times it achieves the strangeness and intensity of science fiction.' Even when nothing much is happening, there is the lurking sense that anything might.'
“Our sense of exploitation and alienation is palpable, but the moments of beauty, tenderness and freedom that punctuate the drudgery provide flickers of humanity that feel almost miraculous.”
“A beautifully observed film of rich detail...The Chambermaid salutes the invisible women caretakers who are the hardworking backbone of society.”
“Minimalist yet sumptuous”
Kate Erbland, IndieWire
‘Gives Powerful Voice to Invisible Laborers.’
‘Actress Gabriela Cartol and first-time director Lila Avilés bring a hotel maid’s dreams and ambitions to vivid life.’
'Marvellously honest… sympathetically achieved.’ The Wrap
'Avilés refuses to present us with an upward trajectory, to allow Eve to break from the hermetic, albeit multiple, worlds of the hotel. In doing so, The Chambermaid exposes not only the often-occluded labour of the hotel chambermaid, but also the restricted field of agency and the precarious alignments these conditions of labour can produce.'
Hannah Paveck, Another Gaze
'Slow, steady, and with an exacting eye for detail, Lila Aviles' The Chambermaid is a painfully astute observational drama...'
Monica Castello, Rogerebert.com
“A fascinating observational drama and occasional allegory for the haves and have-nots.”
“Nuanced and natural, it has a quiet and modest power…A character study free of pretense.”
John Fink, The Film Stage
'Eve is one of the most fully and forcefully crafted characters I have seen on screen in some time. Yet to herself, her fellow workers, hotel guests and society at large, she is a maid and nothing more. But she is trying, and the modulated and respectful way Avilés—an actor and dramatist making her feature film directorial debut—captures those efforts is extremely moving.'
It is difficult to resist comparing The Chambermaid to Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma. But while that film was epic in its scope and presented its lead character in a heroic manner, Avilés’ film is small in scale and wishes not to aggrandize Eve but simply give her an opportunity to exist on her own terms. There is also nothing showy about her approach. Her camera almost never moves; instead, she and cinematographer Carlos F. Rossini illustrate Eve’s isolation through dramatic use of rack focus.'
Oliver Jones, Observer
“Coolly unsentimental to the point of being glacial, but possessed of a deadpan wit and downplayed humanistic warmth of its own.”
Jonathan Romney, Screen International
