By Tamar Noort. If humans weren’t a social species, they wouldn’t need values. But since nobody lives on this world alone, we figured out some rules to alleviate social life. This rules concern, amongst other things, distance and closeness – they determine the borderlines of human relationships. You don’t go too close to a stranger, and you respect the needs and wishes of someone you love. If everybody follows these rules, something like a perfect social equilibrium is struck – but it can hardly ever be sustained for long.

In his film MAID TO OUST Julien Rouyet shows the chain reactions that develop when this equilibrium is broken. Stephanie has a problem with some slackers in her flat, which her boyfriend has dragged in with him – they refuse to leave her home. So she resigns, finding herself a cozy hideaway in the villa of her employer. This rich female lawyer’s house, in which she is the cleaning lady, at first is nothing more but a refuge, but after a while Stephanie makes the place her own – now ignoring all the rules of decent cohabitation herself. The absolute helplessness expressed by the respective victims shows just how strong this set of values is imprinted into our society. How do you defend yourself against behaviour that seems just unimaginable. There are no rules for this kind of conflict – so neither are there any solutions. Once the strict set of values is broken down, there is space opened up for something completely new. Once the rigid outlines of everyday life have been dissolved, you can be free from circumstances that seemed to be hard as stone not so long ago. A life without those strict rules, Rouyet suggests, offers you the chance to reinvent yourself. Identity is a flexible structure that can be re-shaped anytime – you just have to summon your courage to do so.

But for Stephanie the role reversal remains nothing but a game. She wants to see how far she can go. The deeper she intrudes into the life of a stranger, the more rules she may break – but she can’t build a new or distinct identity for herself. She just appropriates someone else’s identity. And by doing so she irrevocably stumbles into a new and rigid set of rules and values.

Links

• MAID TO OUST (CH 2008. Julien Rouyet)
• No Desire, No Story – An interview with Julien Rouyet
• Missed Opportunities – Tamar Noort about the Swiss film market