The Chambermaid(La Camarista)

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

The film’s style is austere — there are few camera movements and no musical score — but its visual wit and emotional sensitivity lift it above the minimalist miserablism that drags down so many well-meaning films about modern workers. After you’ve seen it, the world looks different.

TheWrap by Carlos Aguilar

Measured in its pacing but never stagnant, The Chambermaid quietly fleshes out Eve’s subconscious with actions rather than words.

Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene

Lila Avilés’s film reserves the possibility of flirtations with disaster to turn into acts of emancipation.

San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson

Shot almost entirely within a hotel, the film operates as a low-budget answer to “Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón’s much-lauded film that also centers on the life of a domestic worker.

The Hollywood Reporter by Jonathan Holland

Its dispassionate approach toward the major injustices and minuscule triumphs that make up the life of its protagonist, superbly played by Gabriela Cartol, is always balanced by compassion, perhaps making it more effective than any impassioned rant.

RogerEbert.com by Monica Castillo

Slow, steady, and with an exacting eye for detail, Lila Avilés’ The Chambermaid is a painfully astute observational drama about a young woman working in one of Mexico City’s posh hotels.

Observer by Oliver Jones

Like the metropolis that sprawls out far below the rooms she cleans, the film quietly pulses with life. And like Eve, we are left hoping she has a larger part to play in that world beyond smoothing blankets and folding toilet paper ends into perfect little triangles.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

Cartol gives a very persuasive performance as Eve, whose inner life is always simmering and bubbling under, while she must maintain a facial blankness as cloudless and pristine as the towels and sheets.

Variety by Peter Debruge

Director Lila Avilés has designed her debut feature, The Chambermaid, to give audiences the opposite opportunity, inviting us to step into the shoes of an invisible woman for two hours, and as such, her film is a rare and special thing.

Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele

It may feel as if these are loosely structured vignettes, but there’s an accumulation at work — the steady drip of dimensionality that the best movies about people at their jobs know how to turn into a complete picture.