‘Diary of a Chambermaid’ Cannes Review: Radu Jude Updates a Classic, Mercilessly

It was obvious to anyone paying attention that Romanian director Radu Jude’s take on Diary of a Chambermaid was never going to show much reverence for Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel, nor for the film adaptations that preceded it — a lineage that includes versions by Buñuel and Renoir, two filmmakers Jude almost certainly holds in high regard. What he does carry over from Buñuel, if anything, is the acid, abrasive tone, which here surfaces periodically as outright slapstick — one of the signature modes of the director behind Kontinental ’25.

What Jude does is center the film on a Romanian maid named Gianina (Ana Dumitrașcu), whose daily diary the film reflects. Unlike the novel, that diary contains no grand episodes, no love affairs, no sexual scandal — just the grind of routine: taking the kid out for a walk, wrangling with his absurd habits and demands, and navigating day to day with the Parisian bourgeois couple who employ her, Pierre and Marguerite (Vincent Macaigne and Mélanie Thierry), who present themselves as progressive and open-minded but are, in practice, mostly preoccupied with themselves.

Gianina’s days can be unremarkable — one running joke is that some days are dispatched in a matter of seconds of screen time — and others more fraught. In between, she video-calls her mother and daughter back in Romania, tries to arrange a visit home (complicated, inevitably, by her employers’ needs), and rehearses a theatrical adaptation of Mirbeau’s original text with a Romanian director and a cast of migrants.

The film, set in Bordeaux, finds its sharpest comic moments whenever Pierre is on screen, thanks to Macaigne’s gift for comedy and the way his guilt-ridden character consistently manages to sidestep any situation that might require him to be uncomfortable. Much the same applies to the scenes where Gianina has to indulge the child’s more capricious whims. In supporting but meaningful roles: Jude’s regular collaborator Ilinca Manolache, and the veteran Rohmer actress Marie Rivière.

Beyond its corrosive humor, which permeates nearly every situation — the theatrical scenes are somewhat broader and less precise, and the rehearsals of the Mirbeau text grow a little repetitive — Diary of a Chambermaid finds a critical yet genuinely entertaining way to bring a classic story into the present tense: a Europe in which Eastern immigrants must endure the passive-aggressive condescension of those who consider themselves allies, as embodied by the couple for whom Gianina works.

Because at bottom, every wish or need Gianina has is contingent on her employers’ priorities. Her announced plan to spend the holidays in Romania with her family collapses the moment they change their own plans and, without much thought, take hers down with them. Or they perform the gesture of listening to her and proceed to ignore what she said. With his characteristic directness, wit, and acidity, Jude has made a present-tense comedy about the pretensions of a modern, fair, democratic Europe — and about who actually pays the price for them.