Hi friend, I had to stop by real quick and tell you about this movie that I watched a few days ago, and trust me, you do want to add it to your Amazon queue #notspons so please, please promise me you will watch The Cleaning Lady (2018) when you have a chance. What was that? Why am I trying to push it to you so hard? Easy answer, because, in my opinion, it was a really sweet movie with a relatable protagonist and a believable antagonist. I will for sure come back and re-watch it whenever I need some gentle feminine energy around me #wheremygirlsat #COVIDlife.
Let’s watch the trailer first and don’t worry, I will not spoil the movie for you, not today ;)
ALICE is our protagonist and we like her. She is a girl’s girl, sincerely nice, polite, welcoming, and an overall good person. She works from home as a beautician and her business allows her to enjoy a comfortable life in Los Angeles. Alice takes good care of herself with nice home-cooked meals, baths, and pampering beauty treatments, also, she goes to Pilates and group therapy. However, Alice is not perfect as she is trying her best to end a relationship with a married man.
SHELLY is our antagonist and we also like her. She is painfully shy due to her appearance and speaks in a very quiet voice, she makes us feel a lot of compassion for her as we can only imagine all the suffering she had to endure when her entire face was burned; we completely understand why she dresses in baggy clothes, with her long hair and baseball cap covering her face, she may look disheveled but we don’t care, we know she is doing her very best at trying to have a normal life and that’s what matters. Shelly works as a maintenance person at Alice’s apartment building and, by happenchance, ends up getting an under-the-table job offer cleaning Alice’s apartment twice a week.
Alice had this gentle way of behaving around others that came across as genuine and safe, so you can imagine how good Shelly must have felt when Alice asked her to stay for dinner, even if it had been as a last minute excuse to keep herself busy while trying to avoid her lover, or, as she put it, her ‘disease’ (Alice had been struggling with love addiction). Over dinner, Shelly willingly opened up to Alice and shared why she was badly burned, granted, she did not disclose the whole horrendous story, but that intimate moment allowed for both women to trust each other which naturally opened the door for their new friendship.
I feel like I am not doing a good job at explaining why this movie felt so wholesome to me. Mmmh… Was it maybe because it was an indie film with a smaller budget which allowed for more creative freedom and realism? Was it because it was shot in my city and it felt familiar? Was it because the sets were not, how do I say it, elaborate and instead reminded me of real livable spaces? Was it because the work/life situation of the protagonist felt like an actual attainable life? Herself, even, she looked like a regular woman (did she remind me of someone I know IRL?). And what about the antagonist? She was so shy and made herself small so as to not be noticed which was heartbreaking but understandable (was that behavior what made me want to ‘protect’ her?). And her backstory, wow, so much sorrow and pain (was that why I felt compassion for her?). I don’t really have the answers to my own questions, but all I know for sure is that these two women gave me such a vibe, a vibe that felt warm and bright and girly.
But don’t get me wrong, not everything was sunshine and rainbows, I mean, this was a horror movie and a bunch of bad stuff did happen, but guess what, I am not going to mention any of it and, instead, I am going to let you find all about it by yourself. Watch now on TUBI.
“You have to, for yourself.” -Shelly
In Love and Fear (and warm fuzzy feelings),
—Marath
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