Raging Grace: Illegal Filipina Domestic Meets British House of Horror in Oddball Social Drama
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-minus
A social drama about undocumented Philippine immigrants in England, wrapped up in a creepy English country mansion thriller, Raging Grace hits more tones than a piano tumbling down a staircase.
By turns earnest, suspenseful, slapstick and silly, this debut feature from British-Filipino director, Paris Zarcilla, won both the Narrative Feature Jury Award and the Thunderbird Rising Award for Best Debut at the 2023 South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival this past year. Presumably, these were a tribute to its confidently oddball ambition more than its choppy execution.
Max Eigenmann is a Filipina nanny whose dream job is a nightmare in Raging Grace.
Joy (Max Eigenmann), is an undocumented Filipina immigrant in her thirties, doing domestic work while trying to care for her mischievous pre-teen daughter, Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla). She moves from one domestic job to another, often couch surfing at the homes of absentee owners or crashing in an apartment building service room, while hiding her daughter’s presence. Meanwhile, she’s trying to save money to purchase an illegal visa.
Miraculously, one day she lands an apparent dream job that provides both accommodation and a good under-the-table salary. She’ll be taking care of a terminally ill, and apparently semi-comatose elderly aristocrat, Mr.Garrett (David Hayman), the heir to a family fortune.
But of course, nightmares are also a form of dream.
Joy’s employer is the old man’ barrister niece, Katherine (Leanne Best), who insists on casual intimacy (“Call me Katherine”) which can suddenly turn to frosty condescension (“Remember this is your workplace, not your home.”). Katherine doesn’t know that Joy is hiding her daughter in her maid’s quarters. But the employer’s away enough of the time that Grace and Joy essentially have the run of the rambling old house. Joy doesn’t know that Katherine is hiding something much more sinister.
Shortly after the mother and daughter are settled in, the movie switches from Ken Loach-like social study into full horror mode, with a few jump scares, nightmares and flashbacks, and a narrative that defies synopsis without spoilers.
Briefly, there are revelations about Mr. Garrett’s medication and complicated shenanigans around the family fortune, a locked wing of the house, and a history of a series of Filipina domestics.
Little Grace, while not exactly showing the rage promised in the title outdoes Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone in doing naughty things to predatory adults.
Divided into a series of on-the-nose titled chapters (e.g, Rudyard Kipling’s “Take up the white man’s burden”), the film jolts toward a combustible climax and ends with a redemptive choir.
All in all, it’s something of a merry mess, barely held together by Eigenmann’s wary, steadfast performance as Joy, an illegal immigrant mother whose life is a nightmare even before the movie turns into one.
Raging Grace. Written and directed by Paris Zarcilla. Starring: Max Eigenmann, Jaeden Paige Boadilla, Leanne Best, David Hayman. Raging Grace opens Dec. 1, at Ottawa (Cinestarz St. Laurent), Burlington and on Dec. 7 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.