The Cleaning Lady (2018)

The Cleaning Lady (2018) [Stalkers]

Director: Jon Knautz

Writers: Alexis Kendra & Jon Knautz

This is the second movie in what looks to be a 3 movie series dealing with relationships between women where one is in power, and the other is under her. The first was the Brazilian film Good Manners and the next one will be Greta.

For a movie that is supposed to be about women, however, screenwriters John Knautz and Alexis Kendra created their characters as 2 dimensional objects.  Most of the women are vain, selfish and superficial creatures whose prime motivations in life are eating chocolates, getting beauty treatments, shopping, and defining themselves through their relationships with men.

Despite having her own business and a fantastic apartment with more candles than any sane person would need, Alice (screenwriter and producer Alexis Kendra) is a living doll. Looking like she was modeled after society's expectations of a beautiful woman, she is tall, skinny,and is incapable of doing anything that is not someone else's  will. She cannot quit smoking, she cannot ditch her manipulative, married lover, and she is incapable of working her 12-step recovery program (despite having a long-term sponsor). As a main character her inability to act or even change one aspect of her life makes her uninteresting, which then brings us to Shelly.

Shelly, the emotionally and physically scarred plumber and cleaning lady of the title has a more fully fleshed-out story, thanks to a couple of flashbacks. When her path crosses living doll Alice, her interests become inflamed and she quickly hatches a plot to add her to her living doll house.

Fairly predictable mayhem ensues.

You have to go through an awful lot of not very original or interesting drama before reaching a merely decent climax. The cleaning lady did not tidy things up.

[IMDB]   [Trailer]