In The Maid in London, rape saves the day

Danni Ugali directed this film, but according to the poster this is a film by BL Panganiban. It doesn't matter, they both made garbage

Andi Eigenmann is a pretty and talented actress, but for some reason she can't catch a break in a lead role. From 2015's Angela Markado, to Tragic Theatre, to the horrendous Your Place or Mine?, filmmakers don't seem to know how to utilize her substantial talent properly in a lead role. With The Maid in London, the streak sadly continues.

The Maid in London is 140 minutes of toxic garbage. It's boring, it's not even funny, and it's full of weird storytelling gymnastics where people get away with rape and murder.

The first half of the film is plodding and mostly unnecessary tripe. Andi Eigenmann plays Margo, a girl who lives with her mother and disabled father. She tries to get by with a humble job at the local market. One day she meets Ben (Mark Evans,) a tricycle driver, who quickly falls in love with her. Remember Ben, because he's one of the film's stupidest characters. After getting drunk, he leads the naive Margo into a remote location and rapes her. There's nothing ambiguous about it: he forced himself upon her.

Now here's where one would think that there would be repercussions to this. Nope! The next day, Ben excitedly tells his parents about the rape baby he's having with Margo and plans to marry her. Margo is (of course) not having it, but she doesn't have a say in things because in this movie, women have absolutely no agency. Margo and Ben get married and the rape is apparently forgiven and never addressed again. According to this movie, rape's okay, as long as you get married to your rapist. Who cares what the woman thinks, right?

Ben eventually gets scammed by a couple of illegal recruiters (one of them is named Mang Kanor, haha), and he ends up killing one of them with a hammer. He's caught almost immediately, and he confesses to the police. He definitely committed a crime (at least homicide, in addition to, you know, RAPING HIS FUTURE WIFE). But Margo defends her rapist and appeals to the bereaved to drop the charges in exchange for money.

By this time, more than half of the movie has passed and there's no sign of either maids or London. But we'll get there, don't worry.

In the meantime, this first half consists mostly of misery porn, electing to pile on problem after problem on Margo's shoulders. There's even a subplot where Margo befriends and dates a rich married man, Jason. Guess what, Jason also tries to rape her (with the same modus operandi as Ben, i.e. getting her to sit in a vehicle and taking her to a remote location.) Luckily, Jason doesn't go through with it (he still has an affair with her, though,) and he instead helps Margo go to London as a maid.

Margo finally makes it to London with her friend, but as it turns out, Margo and her friend are working illegally (and Jason bankrolls this despite his suspicions that Margo is dealing with an illegal recruiter.) So they live the TnT (tago ng tago) life, working secretly under the radar of the immigration police (probably a casting quirk, but 80% of the British cops in this movie are female.) This idea of working illegally is not a new idea (think Transit or Imbisibol), but it could be worth delving into in this setting. Unfortunately the movie fails to make any of it the least bit compelling. There's a subplot about Margo's friend having a relationship with a fellow illegal immigrant, but that's quickly snuffed out, as the film begins to hurry towards the climax.

And what a climax it is. (Hint: it contains rape.)

After Margo's father passes away, her mother tells her that her dad is not her real dad, and she's a product of rape (!) as her mother was raped by a British man a couple of decades ago. Since she's the biological daughter of a British national, her pesky immigration problems could disappear. Surprise surprise, her biological dad turns out to be one of her employer's old friends, who is also some sort of government bigwig. Said dad meets with Margo's employer, who turns out to be a lawyer, and there's an extended sequence about him worrying about not getting prosecuted for rape, and someone explaining that it's okay. So once again, the rape seems to be forgiven. Shortly after that, biological dad dies or something (I'm too busy groaning to notice) and he leaves Margo with a substantial amount of cash that helps her clear all of her debts and helps release her rapist murderer husband from prison. The end.

Had Margo's biological dad not raped her mother all those years ago, Margo would still be working illegally in London under threat of deportation. Her husband would still be in jail. Heck, Margo wouldn't be born if that rape didn't occur, and she would not have had the opportunity to help her family.

RAPE LITERALLY SAVED THE DAY. YAY RAPE.

Recent events have shed a light on women's sexual rights and the importance of speaking against sexual assault. This movie takes the idea of women's rights and takes a giant Cleveland Steamer on its chest. By the last act I was literally (loudly, sorry fellow cinemagoers) hurling expletives at the screen. I'm a little hoarse now thanks to that. This movie made me angry, and I felt sorry for Andi Eigenmann that she had to participate in this, since she deserves much better projects than this shit.

On the technical side, the filmmaking is bland and uninspired, some shots are blurry and out of focus, and the subtitles are weird and full of grammatical and typographical errors.

The Maid in London is feces personified as a movie. I generally don't condone supporting watching foreign films over local films, but watch (and demand for) other films like Ant Man 2 so that we can get this garbage out of our cinemas as soon as possible. This is not worth 300 pesos, 200 pesos or even 50 centavos. Recommending this film should be some sort of criminal offense.