FuzzyTagz
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Abbigail Bush
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Kaydan Christian
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
Philippa
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
filmalamosa
Senora Beba is a 50 something (approaching 60) woman who is having to learn to live with reduced circumstances. She is the perfect upper middle class rattle brained blond who is maybe really not so rattle brained.Dora is her live in maid of 30 years who is going to quit because Senora Beba can no longer pay her salary reliably.Neither one want this to happen.It is a wonderful look at life as you get older live alone and have less income.Both characters and the film are 100% real.This movie is a must see.
NICO
Beba is a wealthy divorced woman who is being gravely affected by the Argentine economy and therefore doesn't have enough money to even pay her maid. Dora, the maid, has been living with the family for thirty years and is torn between not wanting to leave Beba alone and needing a steady income. The pace of the movie is kind of slow as the plot is very simple and does not go beyond the regularities of the lives of the two main characters. However, the simplicity and regularity of the story is quite enjoyable as we are able to truly enter the lives of two very different women and identify the many differences between them. The director Jorge Gaggero shows us the way in which people's roles in a relationship can certainly change over time. Although Beba has been in charge of Dora for so long because of her economic status, when her status changes, Beba has nothing to hold over her and soon realizes how much she needs Dora. The movie explores economic class differences in Argentina through a very personal lens which in turn results in a very interesting and meaningful story.
David Ferguson
Greetings again from the darkness. Very intimate tale of the 30 year relationship between a once wealthy woman and her live-in maid. Written and directed by Jorge Gaggero, the film picks up as Bebe is finally starting to acknowledge her financial difficulties and Dora her maid, is just about at the end of her patience, after not being paid for more than 7 months.Obviously the bond created by time between the women is very strong, but only really shows at the oddest moments ... a sharp of glass in the foot or while hosting ladies night. The two lead performances are sterling and top notch. Veteran actress Norma Aleandro plays Bebe as a drunken, yet prideful woman, who obviously needs the companionship of her maid/friend. Norma Argentina plays the mostly stoic Dora as the maid who realizes she is the salvation to this very proud woman whose life is crumbling.The intimacy of the scenes with both is pretty strong stuff and the nuanced performances are rarely seen in American cinema. Buenos Aires is given little screen time, but we still get the drift of the social pressures of a past life. Very strong film that was a Sundance favorite in 2005, but is only now making the rounds at indie theatres.
rantchester
This slow but involving human drama takes Argentina's recent economic meltdown as its prompt. Cama Adentro means 'live-in maid': Jorge Gaggero's sensitive film pursues the deep but uneasy relationship between the genteel, newly-impoverished Beba (Norma Aleandro) and Dora (Norma Argentina), the servant with whom she's shared her Buenos Aires apartment for almost 30 years.Sudden lack of money has flipped the pair's dependency. Unable to pay her maid for several months, lonely, prideful Beba stands to lose the only reliable company she's known (her daughter, like her husband, has previously departed - alienated, we're left to assume, by Beba's haughtiness). Dora, meanwhile, must decide whether to stay and assist her unravelling employer, or take her chances in an economy with fewer and fewer jobs.What could have become gooey and trite in the hands of a lesser director is instead rendered plausibly complex: the women struggle to preserve their dignity in straitened circumstances, and to forge a new accord based on mutuality rather than compulsion. Both Beba and Dora are endearingly flawed - the former supercilious and unyielding, the latter torn between contempt and sympathy for her former boss. Argentina is gruffly impressive as the emotionally-contained maid, while Aleandro's monstrous but piteous snob is an equally sharp portrayal. In Gaggero's measured telling, the pair's not-quite-friendship rings all the more true for being revealed with unsentimental compassion.