Writer-director Clariond Rangel’s debut feature is a masterful study of the corrosive effect of dysfunctional race, class and gender relations, with the mounting tension periodically released by delicious moments of black comedy. Award- winning actress Langer plays a 63-year-old lonely housewife ignored by her wealthy husband and alienated by their social milieu. After hiring a new maid, Hilda, she begins remembering her revolutionary past and questions her pampered but empty present. Meanwhile, her dependency on Hilda grows into an uncomfortable obsession as she becomes gradually more unhinged.
The director commented that “being part of a country stricken by so many inequalities and home to millions of poor people, the Mexican upper class is a mixture of waste and guilt, of acts of charity, classism and exclusion, and a walking contradiction. I wanted to make a social portrait without overlooking the protagonist’s emotional complexity. Mrs LeMarchand represents the frustration faced by so many women in their senior age, caused by their comparison of the goals of their youth and their actual life achievements.”