Radu Jude's 'Diary of a Chambermaid' is a modern-day take on a French classic, offering a caustic and melancholic perspective on a century-old story. This film, set in the picturesque city of Bordeaux, is a clever meta-structure that provides a running commentary on its famous source material, Octave Mirbeau's controversial novel. The director sets his movie in the present, taking liberties with the original text and throwing much of the novel's plot out the window. However, he still manages to capture its essence, transforming the tale of an exploited 19th-century maid into one about a Romanian immigrant working as a nanny for two passive-aggressive French intellectuals.
What makes this particularly fascinating is how Jude updates Mirbeau's scathing look at class hierarchies and modern-day slavery, highlighting how the cycle of exploitation remains unbroken over a hundred years later. The director doubles-down on his adaptation by having Gianina perform in a theatrical version of 'Diary of a Chambermaid', staged by another Romanian and co-starring a fellow foreigner. The rehearsal scenes for that production can be somewhat trying and over-the-top, but they provide a nice mirror to the rest of the plot.
In my opinion, the film's best sequences involve Gianina dealing with Pierre and Marguerite, a pair of well-meaning bobos who can't help ordering her around half the time. The crisp, fixed medium-shots staged by Jude get the best out of the performances. The rest of the film relies on phone footage taken by Gianina as she wanders Bordeaux and talks on Facetime with Maria, who misses her mother dearly and isn't afraid to say so. The underlying sense of longing and melancholy is a powerful commentary on the human condition.
One thing that immediately stands out is how Jude uses Mirbeau's text as a springboard to lambast the current social order, wavering from the narrative to discuss subjects like Communism, Maoism and the fate of Romanian dictator Ceausescu. These may seem like digressions, yet everything is connected in a movie that never ditches its razor-sharp view of class exploitation. It may appear now in new forms and iterations, but even a century or so after the book came out, it's still the same story.
From my perspective, 'Diary of a Chambermaid' is a thought-provoking and engaging film that offers a fresh perspective on a classic story. It's a powerful commentary on the human condition, highlighting the cycle of exploitation and the underlying sense of longing and melancholy. The film's meta-structure and clever use of phone footage add depth and complexity to the story, making it a truly unique and memorable cinematic experience.
