DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (FEMME DE CHAMBRE) Luminaries

Enfant terrible of the Romanian New Wave, filmmaker Radu Jude (KONTINENTAL ’25, AFI FEST 2025) returns with another scathing satire, loosely adapting Octave Mirbeau’s novel into a metatextual and even more provocative treatise on class and immigration in modern-day Europe. Gianina (Ana Dumitrașcu) is the titular maid, a Romanian immigrant working for upper-class couple the Donnadieus (French stars Mélanie Thierry and Vincent Macaigne) in Bordeaux. By day she takes care of their entitled young son, but by night she rehearses for an all-immigrant production of “The Diary of a Chambermaid,” encouraged by her employers to participate due to her own status. But her day-to-day in France is just a distraction from her life in Romania, where she supports her sullen tween daughter and mother from afar. While the Donnadieus are staunch progressives, they can’t help but be patronizing while showing off Gianina to their haughty friends at a dinner party. Suffering through barely veiled humiliation, Gianina sets her sights on the countdown to Christmas, when she can finally reunite with her family. Diligently cutting between domestic tableaus, absurd rehearsals of the original material and intimate video calls between Gianina and her family, Jude puts his own stamp on material previously adapted by Renoir and Buñuel to find pathos and humor in Gianina’s journey through the travails of the servant class. –Josh Gardner