Loosely adapted from Octave Mirbeau’s Decadent novel, and transformed farcically as only filmmaker Radu Jude can, “The Diary of a Chambermaid” is yet another socioeconomic economic satire from a Romanian artist whose veins practically pulse with the stuff. At a mere 94 minutes in length, its meandering, meta-textual appearance might seem like a misfire at first, but it disguises what might be Jude’s most slyly character-focused work, culminating in a completely unexpected emotional gut punch.
No foreknowledge of Mirbeau’s late 19th century landmark is required, since Jude works a slapstick version of it into his Paris-set text. Bit by bit, the story’s most salacious scenes are re-enacted on stage by Gianina (Ana Dumitrașcu), who is very much not an actress, but rather a migrant maid from Romania, hired for this amateur production at the behest of her employers. Like the original’s Célestine, she cooks and cleans for an upper class couple, the Donnadieus, with whom she lives. The similarities to the book end there — at least on the surface.
As Jude gradually peels back the layers of this central dynamic, he channels Mirbeau’s anarchist spirit and his skewering of capitalist hierarchies as a modern slavery, a theme he makes all but explicit through coy reflections on France’s own past, and its involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Most of Jude’s movies are fairly on-the-nose about what they have to say, but “Chambermaid” is surprisingly subdued, relegating these comparisons to fleeting shots of Parisian architecture that hide historical horrors, or blink-and-you’ll-miss-it racist trinkets around the Donnadieu household.
The movie’s plot is an intentional plateau, adapting the novel’s diaristic structure in the form of occasional video messages and FaceTime calls between Gianina and her nine-year-old daughter living with grandma back in Romania. The story, now a video epistolary, begins in autumn, as blank screens marked only with dates abruptly interrupt numerous scenes — some of these cuts are funny in and of themselves — marking both the passage of time, and the proximity of Gianina’s eventual Christmas trip home. Nothing in particular happens, beyond Gianina raising the Donnadieus’ son and drawing the jealousy of her daughter in turn, but this turns Jude’s narrative into an anxious waiting game, as we start to anticipate what economic hurdles might inevitably prevent Gianina’s long-awaited return.
The couple themselves — Marguerite (Mélanie Thierry) and Pierre Donnadieu (Vincent Macaigne) — are, for the most part, personable, but their generosity disguises a cultural condescension. Jude’s continuing puncturing of the modern, pseudo-intellectual liberal finds an especially apt home at the couple’s social gatherings, to which Gianina plays host and becomes a topic of conversation, as guests attempt to force political opinions out of her as she pours them wine. Although she presents herself as apolitical — an obedient, unobtrusive member of the servant class — she’s far from un-opinionated on her aforementioned calls, and lets some amusing epithets fly.
As expected, Jude largely presents his vignettes at an observational distance, barring, of course, the FaceTime conversations. However, this dueling visual approach is more cohesive than you might expect, owing to his lo-fi video aesthetic, which ensures that even ostensibly “objective” scenes (which is to say, more traditionally staged drama) feel immediately at one with the video calls. The world is digital now, and Jude uses this texture as a constant reminder of where Gianina’s attention truly lies: with her own family, back home.
The close-up nature of these calls ensures that the relationship between Gianina and her daughter — who’s increasingly upset by her mother’s absence — becomes a moral compass of sorts. Where Jude’s recent films, like “Dracula” and “Kontinental ’25,” used voiceover and wider social media environments to re-enforce themes, “Chambermaid” features an uncharacteristic elegance from the gonzo satirist, who makes his characters’ struggles for dignity his north star.
For a while, the movie’s major downside appears to be the extended stage sections, which re-create the novel’s sexual provocations for a laugh, and initially feel like Jude ensuring that every element of Mirbeau’s text gets its due — even the more extraneous ones. However, these seemingly gaudy detours end up retrofitted to Jude’s larger point about power structures in modern Europe as well, when the camera eventually pulls back to focus on specifics of the production.
If you haven’t caught on by now, “The Diary of a Chambermaid” requires a little more patience than most of Jude’s filmography (yes, even his three-hour, A.I.-heavy “Dracula”), but its rewards aren’t just of the usual, intellectual sort. Nestled between the layers is a genuinely heartfelt story that blooms from beneath all the aesthetic and verbal vulgarity, thus making innate, and intuitive, his ongoing, ever-evolving manifesto on the state of things.
Grade: B+
“The Diary of a Chambermaid” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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