Maintenance

Most everyone cleans their home, unless they hire someone to take care of it, but whether they relish or loathe it, this labor is largely unwitnessed and undervalued. In her meditative documentary, Adele Horne turns a fixed camera on fifteen people doing routine house maintenance. Each portrait is followed by a text in which the person reveals intimate attitudes toward cleaning. One reviewer referred to it as a “very dirty movie,” but for Michael Sicinski writing in Cinema Scope, “It’s like a James Benning remake of Jeanne Dielman. And, in fact, Benning shows up, washing a screen door.”