The Diary of a Chambermaid

Immigrant maid Gianina (an inspired performance by Ana Dumitrașcu) is working in Paris, trying to arrange a visit to her daughter in rural Romania for Christmas and New Year’s. The family she works for is reliable but at the same time utterly condescending and disrespectful.

While she takes care of and stays in the wealthy family’s home, her own daughter lives with her grandmother in a house that is falling apart. The French family pretends they care about her longing for her daughter but always seems to put their own needs first.

Gianina has many roles. Apart from being an immigrant worker and a mother, she is also cast in an amateur theatre production of Octave Mirbeau’s Diary of a Chambermaid.

The film itself is a contemporary meditation on Mirbeau’s classic novel, in which one of Romania’s top directors, Radu Jude, paints a vivid image of different classes living in separate realities. The story goes beyond Mirbeau’s original idea of the morally corrupt bourgeoisie and the exploited working class, which in turn becomes corrupt. Jude turns to topics of immigration, motherly love and a more nuanced look on class differences.

The topics range from the Ukraine war and human and animal rights to fairytales, revealing the detachment of the upper class from the everyday lives of working class people, touching on hypocritical attitudes and performative solidarity. Ultimately, despite the class differences, the shared experience is one of love and revolutions (or love and anarchy if you wish).

Ljubomir Delevic