The "Bad Seed" from Oaxaca

EdgarST

Promoting the film as the "opposite extreme" of Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma" is neither profit nor loss. Both simply tell stories about domestic workers in Mexico City and include moments when the servant becomes "Supermaid", which does not imply any change in the worker-employer relations. However, it is good to recognize that Xavi Sala tells the story from the point of view of a Oaxacan servant and her 12-year old daughter, while Cuarón's is the opposite, as compassionate and democratic as the filmmaker appears or wants to be.

The most serious problems of Xquipi 'Guie'dani have to do with the level of credibility of the script, with its tone, with the performances and the direction, to begin with. There are moments in the film that seem to be taken from bad soap operas, such as the scene in which the four members of the upper-middle class family watch television together and discusse negative issues about the maid and her daughter (I think bosses do not spend as much time on their problems with the maids: they simply fire them) or the moment Guie'dani breaks a piece of crockery and it is the father who reacts in a way that is decidedly incoherent with his social class, as if he were a slaver who only lacks a whip.

The tone is stale melodrama, but the characters lack a healthy sense of humor, and if they laugh it to make fun of each side. The performers range from one-note performances to very bad acting: in this field, Juan Ríos (as the father) and Yuriria del Valle (as the mother) are the worst players. Xavi Sala's direction neither removes nor puts, but I think that, in some way, his condition as foreigner, which could have been a blessing (as Antonioni was to "Blowup", Schlesinger to "Midnight Cowboy" or Herzog to "Stroszek"), is more detrimental to his work, evident in the times when we feel that he is using formulaic solutions from old-fashioned melodrama, instead of using a slightly more anthropological approach to the facts.

In conclusion little Guie'dani only remains as a resentful Oaxacan, with a touch of evil from which we know or are told nothing (not even in the melodramatic style of the final scene of "Psycho"), which ends up agreeing with the journalist who called the movie "the nightmare of the employers of Mexico".

score 5/10

EdgarST 12 March 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5545808/