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Short Film Reviews: A Cleaning Service (2024) by Nguyen Duy Anh

A Cleaning service still

In the recent years, we have seen some content about domestic workers in Asia, with two episodes in “Food Lore” series for example, highlighting the concept, along with a number of documentaries that have been circulating the festival circuit. Vietnamese comes up with his own version on the subject, through a film that manages to appear as sci-fi, despite the fact that it is not at all.

won the Shorts Award at the Alternativa Film Awards

The story of the 18-minute short revolves around an early morning radio program, featuring female technology domestic workers. One of them, Ms Lai, is a trainer, explaining the nature of her work and that of cleaners in general, while another, Nguyen Kieu Anh, an expert in aromas, is welcomed to divulge a formula for a soothing steam bath. While they talk, we also watch segments from the everyday lives of domestic workers.

Nguyen Duy Anh directs a film that presents the concept quite thoroughly, essentially starting from how these women start their day, until the moment they finish their jobs and return home. Ms Lai is more hands-on, talking about the personal issues they occasionally face and the misconception about their job, while Kieu Anh focuses on her recipe. While the two women are talking, sequences from workers appear on the screen, through rather different approaches, as the movie combines the essence of the sci-fi, the comedy and the surrealistic, while retaining a subtle notion of drama throughout.

The result, in a testament to Nguyen Duy Anh’s directorial prowess and his excellent editing, which connects the different sequences here in a way that is both informative and playful. The desaturated cinematography by Nguyen Quang Vinh on the other hand, is the factor responsible for the dystopian/sci-fi aspect of the movie, in an approach that actually works rather well. The acting has a particular rhythm that matches the cuts, with the way the various domestic workers are presented reminding of silent-cinema, also in the way, a sense of hilarity is communicated through them.

“A Cleaning Service” is a little gem of a film, one that manages to highlight its main subject eloquently, through a different approach that remains entertaining from beginning to end.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

Panagiotis (Panos) Kotzathanasis is a film critic and reviewer, specialized in Asian Cinema. He is the owner and administrator of Asian Movie Pulse, one of the biggest portals dealing with Asian cinema. He is a frequent writer in Hancinema, Taste of Cinema, and his texts can be found in a number of other publications including SIRP in Estonia, Film.sk in Slovakia, Asian Dialogue in the UK, Cinefil in Japan and Filmbuff in India.

Since 2019, he cooperates with Thessaloniki Cinematheque in Greece, curating various tributes to Asian cinema. He has participated, with video recordings and text, on a number of Asian movie releases, for Spectrum, Dekanalog and Error 4444. He has taken part as an expert on the Erasmus+ program, “Asian Cinema Education”, on the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course.

Apart from a member of FIPRESCI and the Greek Cinema Critics Association, he is also a member of NETPAC, the Hellenic Film Academy and the Online Film Critics Association.

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