Themes: Immigrant Life, Inner City Blues, Servants and Employers
Main Cast: Adrien Brody, Elpidia Carrillo, Frankie DaVila, George Lopez
Release Year: 2000
Country: UK/ES/DE
Run Time: 110 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Leftist filmmaker Ken Loach directs this grim drama about the plight of seemingly invisible office cleaners in contemporary L.A. who often earn as little as $6 a day without benefits. The film opens as Maya (Pilar Padilla), a young Mexican lass, is reuniting with her older sister Rosa (Elpidia Carrilio) in L.A. after a harrowing cross-border journey. Rosa sets her sister up first with a job as a barmaid, which Maya soon quits after getting repeatedly groped -- and then as a janitor. When her boss demands one month's salary as "commission," Maya happens upon Sam Shapiro (Adrien Brody), a muckraking lawyer and union agitator. This film, which was screened in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, is remarkable for its prescience -- it was shown a month after a massive janitor's strike ground L.A.'s business community to a halt. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Catherine Doherty - Art Director, Ricardo Mendez Matta - First Assistant Director, Ken Loach - Director, Jonathan Morris - Editor, Ulrich Felsberg - Executive Producer, George Fenton - Composer (Music Score), Martin Johnson - Production Designer, Barry Ackroyd - Cinematographer, Rebecca O'Brien - Producer, Ray Beckett - Sound/Sound Designer, Paul Laverty - Screenwriter, Haskell Wexler - Second Unit Director Of Photography
The film is critical of inequalities in the United States. Health insurance in particular is highlighted and it is also claimed in the film that the pay of cleaners and other low paying jobs has declined in recent years.
