Plot

A film version of Genet's play. Two house cleaners, Solange and Claire, hate their employers and, while they are out, take turns at dressing up as Madame and insulting her.

'The Maids' was one of Jean Genet's most outstanding plays representing the avant-garde of French playwriting when it was written in 1946. On the surface the film is about two maids of a wealthy Parisian woman, who resentful of their servitude dream of their escape and their revenge on Madame. But with wonderful high rhetoric where Genet turns evil into a sort of religious ecstasy, both the maids and their mistress are shown to be caught up in whirligigs of false illusions and inaccessible desires, which ultimately end in tragedy.

A film version of Genet's play. Two maids, Solange and Claire, hate their employers and, while they are out, take turns at dressing up as Madame and insulting her.—Will Gilbert

Film version of the play by French absurdist writer Jean Genet. Solange (Glenda Jackson) and Claire (Susannah York) are two sisters who work as servants for a strict Madame (Vivian Merchant). When Madame and Monsieur (Mark Burns) leave the house, the two women enact dramatic role playing games. To get out their sexual frustrations against their boss and each other, they alternate the parts of master and servant.—alfiehitchie