A Beautiful Mess

My grandmother was a single mother who raised six children on her own. Being illiterate, her only way to eke out a living was to work as a part time maid in half a dozen homes a day. With that meager survival, she managed to put four of her children through college.

I’ve always been inspired by her story and wherever I’ve lived, I’ve always had a maid come in once a week. It’s a job that gives struggling women a chance. For seven years, I had an incredibly hard-working woman clean my apartment. She used to come in while I was at work, so I never got to see her. But she made my life immeasurably better. She was very intuitive and thoughtful.

When my girlfriend (Jolianne, my producer) moved in with me something snapped. Everything changed. What followed was an extremely passive-aggressive, territorial battle between two women who had never met. My maid hated the woman who had moved in with me. If Jolianne rearranged the furniture, she’d come back home and find that the maid had put things back to their original position. The idea of this film is directly inspired by our experience living under that situation.

It took us a long time to realize that even though it was our home, the maid had ownership, too. Our home was her place of work. It was sacred. She and I had a silent understanding over how the home operated. Jolianne had infiltrated this sacred space. She was an interloper. So the maid made sure to shrink her clothes in the wash, or move around objects to irritate her. And God alone knows, what she did with her toothbrush. It’s doubly ironic that Jolianne worked as a maid as well while she was in college.

In the film, I wanted to capture the emotional bond a person has with their workspace. And how any changes within can affect their state of mind. I wanted the film to be observed, so I decided to shoot only with natural light. I wanted to use the camera movements to express the maid’s loneliness and the internal conflict bubbling too quickly to the surface. There is no dialogue in the film because none is required. The film is a chamber piece with only one character, but I tried to flesh out the other characters through their objects, clothes and the mess they leave behind. All in all, I wanted to to do a short character study with some undertones of dark humor.

Thank you for your consideration.