Having it Maid

Thanks to the likes of J. Lo and Nicole, the glorious beautiful-women-cleaning-toilets film genre gets a jolt.

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IN THE PAST THREE YEARS, 2.7 million jobs have disappeared from the American economy, so it is hardly surprising that movies about maids are popping up everywhere. First came Blue Crush, the saga of a young blonde in Hawaii who finances her fledgling surfing career by scouring puke-stained toilets. This was succeeded by Maid in Manhattan, the rags-to-riches tale of a Bronx-dwelling menial with a great ass (Jennifer Lopez) who falls in love with a dashing politico (Ralph Fiennes) who does not have a great ass but who cares deeply about the poor. (No, he is not a Republican.)

Next up was The Human Stain, where Nicole Kidman plays a multitasking cleaning lady, milkmaid and postal worker--a potentially deadly combination--who is smitten by a disgraced Massachusetts academic with a mysterious English accent (Anthony Hopkins) while being stalked by a psychotic Vietnam vet (Ed Harris) who has never forgiven her for letting their kids catch on fire. This was followed by House of Sand and Fog, starring Jennifer Connelly as an emotionally distraught cleaning lady who enters into a disastrous liaison with a well-meaning but unethical cop.

Not to be outdone, the British, suffering their own economic woes, have bequeathed us Dirty Pretty Things, in which the lovely Audrey Tautou plays a Turkish chambermaid who becomes involved with a doctor who has just found a human heart floating in one of the toilets she regularly cleans. The simultaneous release of so many films documenting the occupational hazards of this ubiquitous yet oddly enigmatic branch of the service sector sends a clear message to the economically disenfranchised everywhere: If at all possible, don't go into the toilet-cleaning business. Get a job at Wendy's.

Maids have always been a fixture of the cinema, but never before have they occupied center stage in such profusion. Until quite recently, the number of films focusing explicitly on the hidden perils of this downscale profession could be counted on one hand: Jean Renoir's Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), Luis Buňuel's remake of the film in 1964, The Maids (1975), and a few other less memorable projects not worthy of our attention here. Things began to change in 1987 when Ally Sheedy appeared in the watershed Maid to Order, playing a spoiled little rich girl who does not learn the meaning of life until she is forced by unexpected economic reverses to take a job cleaning Valerie Perrine's bathroom.

This was followed four years later by Rambling Rose, showcasing Laura Dern as an adorable slut who lands a job as a housekeeper in a dignified Depression-Era home down in Dixie but who wrecks everything by attempting to seduce her employer (Robert Duvall), sleeping with everything in trousers in the whole of Georgia and masturbating in the presence of a boy who has just reached the age of puberty. This was the first time in living memory that anyone had given a performance as a maid that was even vaguely deserving of an Academy Award nomination. Much less a masturbating maid.

In fact, Rambling Rose started a trend. In 1995, Kathy Bates delivered an electrifying performance (the title role in Dolores Claiborne) as a hard-nosed domestic who may or may not be a two-time murderer but who is inarguably a whiz with the feather duster. Not to be outdone, Lynn Redgrave in Gods and Monsters drew universal critical kudos for her winning turn as a frumpy Eastern European housekeeper doomed to serving an aging, decrepit director of '30s monster movies who has an unwholesome interest in young men--preferably those wearing gas masks and little else. Then along came Gosford Park, offering up a literal bevy of oppressed domestics, spearheaded by the lovely Emily Watson.

This brings us to the present, when Kidman, Connelly and Tautou have all swung a mean mop in high-profile motion pictures that may get serious attention come Oscar night. Cynics might suggest that this trio of gorgeous actresses has stocked up on the Draino, Windex and Ty-D-Bol in a cunning effort to rake in Academy Awards, since the whore-with-the-heart-of-gold gambit (LA. Confidential, Pretty Woman, Mighty Aphrodite) seems to have run its course. Like Marie Antoinette masquerading as a shepherdess, or so the cynics carp, these comely women are deliberately slumming it, hamming it up as downtrodden losers merely to get the Academy's attention. I do not share this opinion. I think all three actresses have seized on the opportunity to portray menials as a way of directing society's attention toward the plight of the largely invisible young women who make our beds, wash our windows and clean our toilets. Sometimes finding human hearts in them.

In discussing motion pictures dealing with this glamourless metier, it is important to remember that just because an actress appears in a film about cleaning ladies, or what the French call cinéma des femmes de chambre, this does not automatically guarantee the attention of the Academy. While I was personally beguiled by Julia Roberts' performance as a psychologically unstable young domestic who falls in love with both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Mary Reilly, she was encumbered with such a ghastly Irish brogue that it wasn't that much easier to understand her than Ms. Cavasoz. And for obvious reasons, Lopez won few plaudits for her role as a social-climbing menial in Maid in Manhattan. The movie was dumb, and Jennifer Lopez is annoying.

If we have learned anything from the recent spate of movies centering on maids, it is that going into service is generally not a wise career choice. In The Human Stain, Kidman falls in love with an ancient, washed up college professor who can't decide whether he is black or Jewish, but who is definitely out of work. Her kids get burned alive, her husband beats her, her lover has multiple personalities and she only became a maid in the first place to escape from a father who abused her. Not surprisingly, she ends up dead in an icy lake. In House of Sand and Fog, Connelly screws up her finances, loses her house, jumps into the sack with a dangerous policeman and has to sleep in her car. And in Dirty Pretty Things, Tautou has to work in a hotel where the toilets have human hearts floating in them. This is no way to treat a cleaning lady.

Though many will argue that Kidman, Connelly and Tautou deliver flawless performances in their three films, I fear that maids the world over may nonetheless take issue with the way they are portrayed in these motion pictures. While earlier films were chockablock with riveting footage of scrubbing, dusting and removing of nagging bathtub stains, these newer films are disappointingly devoid of such material. For example, Kidman is never once seen cleaning a toilet or grimy bathtub, much less gussied up like a milkmaid, and Connelly spends most of the film obsessing over legal and real estate issues. More troubling still, it is not Tautou herself, but her doctor consort who unearths the floating heart in the clearly untidy bowl.

Yet in a larger sense all this is nitpicking. The fact that three beautiful, talented actresses have simultaneously taken it upon themselves to portray the plight of the modern maid demonstrates that the motion-picture industry, after years of turning a blind eye to this tawdry profession, now deeply cares about their blighted economic circumstances. For the first time in history, maids are taking their place in the sun. As suns go, this one is not particularly bright; nevertheless, the efflorescence of films of this genre is fraught with possibilities. In time, we may live to see Barbra Streisand and Lauren Bacall paired as dueling domestics in Grumpy Old Chambermaids, or Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres as dying lesbian cleaning ladies who reunite to do one last load of Madonna's soiled dominatrix outfits in Domestic Bliss.

On a purely personal note, I would like to point out that I have visited literally hundreds of motels and hotels in the past decade, and I have never once seen a maid who looks as good as Kidman, Connelly, Tautou, Watson or Lopez. For that matter, I have never seen a maid who looks as good as Redgrave. To be perfectly honest, I've never seen a maid who looks as good as Bates.

I have got to stop staying at the Econolodge.

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David Thomson is on vacation and will return next issue.