The debut feature by Mexican Lila Avilés is a masterpiece of restraint, building a rich world within a luxury hotel
So small, but so resistant. This is how 24-year-old hotel maid Eve (Gabriela Cartol) is described by her colleague Miriam (Teresa Sánchez), barely flinching as she receives a violent electric shock. Scrubbing lavatories and fluffing pillows at the glamorous Hotel Presidente in Mexico City, Eve works unsociable hours in order to pay for childcare for her four-year-old son. At lunch, she limits herself to popcorn, the cafeteria’s cheapest offering. She is stoic and hardy, resistant, if not impervious, to the job’s daily grind. As with the electric shock, she grows more powerful as she absorbs it.
Lila Avilés’s droll debut feature follows Eve’s attempts to secure a promotion that would place her in charge of the hotel’s 42nd floor. There are diversions, such as an after-hours adult education programme, and a brief dalliance with a window cleaner whom she occasionally allows to admire her through glass, but mostly Eve remains diligently focused. Still, it’s a long way to the top and she must work her way up, obeying the strict hierarchies that govern the high-rise hotel. For the duration of the film, like Eve, we stay within its confines, lurking in the anonymous corridors and secret lifts that lead to the building’s bowels, seeking respite in the laundry room where towels and bed linen are stacked in wobbling white towers. We never see Eve’s commute. The days are monotonous and indistinguishable.
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