The Diary of a Chambermaid
(Le journal d'une femme de chambre)
Gianina, a young Romanian woman, works as the live-in nanny and housekeeper for a bourgeois family in France. While she cares for their young son, garnering his affection with her fanciful yet terrifying Romanian folk tales, her own daughter is growing up—and growing resentful—in her absence back home. In the evenings, she rehearses the lead role in an amateur theater production of Mirbeau’s The Diary of a Chambermaid. Providing for her daughter and mother in Romania seems to be going to plan, but the casual exploitation by her employers reaches bizarre new heights as life begins to imitate art.
Master of the absurd Radu Jude (Kontinental 25, Dracula) crafts a poignant class satire with his signature deadpan wit and off-kilter charm. Through Gianina’s eyes—her video calls with family in Romania, her rehearsals, the day-to-day transgressive demands from her oblivious employers—the plight of a servant from a century-old text reverberates into the present, the cycles of exploitation as striking as ever.
