Maid to order

A once-cozy living room, onto which the shadows of a country's decline are steadily lengthening, is the microcosmic setting for Jorge Gaggero's gem-like comedy of class matters, Live-In Maid (Film Sales Company), which opens July 18 at New York Film Forum. The movie won a special jury prize at Sundance in 2005, and proves worth the wait. Modest and sharply observed, it is the story of Beba (the great Norma Aleandro, of The Official Story and Gaby: A True Story, who has spent much of two decades since onstage), whose life is melting down, one trip to the neighborhood pawn shop at a time, in the economic crisis that ushered Argentina unsteadily into the new millennium. Beba, a divorcee hell-bent on keeping up appearances, is held together by her maid, Dora (Norma Argentina). But Dora, a woman of monumental patience, has gone unpaid for seven months, a situation that is tipping into crisis. With little of value left in her apartment to maintain, Beba would probably be better off without Dora, and vice versa, but neither woman can easily leave behind the 30 years of memories of relationships and camaraderie they have shared.

Live-In Maid could probably use a title with more heft, but it is a appealing miniature, one that rarely strays from its central subject in 83 quick-witted minutes. Gaggero neatly sketches the shared plight of the two women as they slip from clinging-to haves to have-nots. Beba's making the rounds at the pawnshops and trying to hustle makeup for a conglomerate, one of the many get-rich-quick schemes she and her ex-husband have fallen prey to over the years, have a desperate humor about them. But it's impossible to laugh at this vain, preening woman when the lights, which have been flickering in her apartment, are finally switched off for good due to non-payment of the bill. Similarly, Dora's checkered past, in the rural village she returns to, gets a sympathetic airing. Live-In Maid is about the never-easy adjustment of accepting the bitter with the sweet once the good times have faded, and the solidarity of friendship against so much indifference from society-at-large.