Is “The Maid” as effective in cinema as in a novel?

The Housekeeper is very good news for culture! For booksellers, already, because Freida McFadden’s book published in paperback by J’ai Lu, sold like hotcakes. Released in 2022 in English then translated into 45 languages ​​the following year, it has sold millions of copies around the world. “It made me want to start reading again and I bought several other thrillers after devouring it,” confides Pauline, 35 years old. The film that Paul Feig based on the novel could well have the same effect in cinemas on Christmas Eve.

Let’s quickly get back to the pitch. A young woman on parole thinks she’s hit the jackpot when she finds a dream job that will save her from a return to prison. Obviously, things aren’t going to turn out the way she wants between her crazy boss and her sexy boss. This classic but effective story is brought to life with a well-chosen cast: Sydney Sweeney as a housekeeper and Amanda Seyfried as a rich and troubled woman.

A faithful adaptation

Paul Feig ticks all the boxes so as not to disappoint the readers of a novel with which he has taken few liberties dubbed by the author of the book. It gives pride of place to complicit actresses by reducing the male roles quite a bit, played by Brandon Sklenar and Michele Morrone, handsome kids with somewhat caricatured characters. The body of the story, in the book as in the film, is the relationship between the two women, a theme dear to the director of My best friends and the female version of SOS Fantômes.

Some viewers (especially those unfamiliar with the book) will no doubt think of domestic thrillers as The Hand on the Cradle a remake of which has just been released on Disney+. There we find proven recipes – beautiful house, wealthy family, painful secrets – cooked to provide a good time with just the right amount of anxiety. The Housekeeper is released in France with a ban on under 12s which corresponds to the level of thrills felt in front of the screen.

Seriously but without pretension

With L’Ombre d’EmilyPaul Feig has demonstrated that he knows how to do it in the field of mainstream thrillers. His film is well calibrated to have a good time because it knows how to take enough distance to provoke knowing smiles in the face of certain predictable adventures. He shares a guilty pleasure for the heroine’s torrid loves and icy anxieties.

Our cinema section

Subtlety is no more one of the ingredients of the film than of those of the book and that is undoubtedly what pleases so much. Like the children we were, we always feel happy hearing the same stories as long as we set the right tone. Paul Feig enjoys his role as storyteller. He takes the matter seriously but without pretension. And that’s all we ask of him. The probable success of the film could lead to the adaptation of the numerous sequels to the novel. Sydney Sweeney probably isn’t done playing the housekeeper! How can we not welcome it if it leads the public to read and go to the cinema?