met V for dinner rather accompany v for dinner as i had mine much earlier.V has been working late recently and has not been out.so guess was a good timing asking her out of her working nest.
we were chatting and we chat what kind of a job that is not stressful and can work out at the same time and no one to disturb u while working then chambermaid came to my mind as V was also saying mayb its nice to work in a hotel.
she yes thats a good one no stress just work through and get to go home and prepare her dinner at home gosh wonder which wire in her brain was loose.too much work?
oh well V below is something for you. by the way catch the dvd maid in manhatten haha!!
"One cannot quite shake the image of amply-derriered megastar wiggling purposefully through the hotel corridors in a white mink apron, and an entourage of 35 mops and a dozen vintage bottles of Domestos. Yet Lopez's most recent cinematic venture is Maid in Manhattan, in which she stars as Marisa Ventura, a single mother eking out a living as a chambermaid at Manhattan's swanky Beresford hotel. Here she meets and falls in love with Christopher Marshall, a rising politician played by Ralph Fiennes.
"She's not me, but she's very close to who I am, and I do understand her," says La Lopez, with a nod to her formative years in the Bronx, before P Diddy and the singing career, and the on-screen romp with George Clooney, and the whirlwind romance with Cris Judd, and the divorce, and the whirlwind romance with Ben Affleck, and the large pink diamond engagement ring. Lest we forget, she is still Jenny from the Block.
To tell us how true-to-life a tale of rags to riches Maid in Manhattan really is, we enlisted the expert opinions of three London chambermaids - the aptly named Olga Lopez, 23, a Spanish former primary teacher, who has been in the UK for almost 18 months; Stella Abinyo, 25, from Uganda, who has been in the UK for a year and is also studying accounting; and Regina Paula, 32, from Brazil, a former psychologist who has been in the UK for a year and a half.
In London they have been working as waiting staff, cloakroom attendants and chambermaids, in hotels such as the Savoy, the Millennium and Threadneedles, earning between £4.50 and £6 an hour. They work eight to four, or nine to five. "At the end of the day," says Olga, "you're really, really tired." But they have grown used to it. "We like it," explains Stella, "but it's taxing being a chambermaid. It's hard work."
This is possibly where the film veers off the route marked Real Life. For Lopez never looks anything other than a contender for the crown of World's Most Exquisitely Groomed Chambermaid, apart from the scene in which she loses her job and spends an hour or so sitting on a swing, crying. "She didn't look very tired," observes Regina, somewhat understatedly.
Lopez inhabits an enchanted hotel world in which she sweet-talks the security guard, banters with the butlers and occasionally launches into impromptu dance routines with her fellow chambermaids.
By contrast, Stella, Olga and Regina all work for an agency, and are never in one place long enough to learn the steps to dance successfully to the tune of I'm Coming Up. "Really," says Olga, "you don't see us all standing around joking and chatting and dancing like in the film. You don't have time. You have half an hour for lunch and that's it."
What they do recognise, however, is the uniforms. "Our uniforms are awful!" groans Olga. "They're similar to in the film, but they're black and white. Really, really! You saw in the film how she changed jobs and yet her uniform was almost the same in the new hotel." The outfit is indeed almost identical. Except the apron is a bit different. This was Olga's favourite part of the film: "She knew that even though she had left a job, she could still get another." "Why is that?" asks Stella, "Is it because she's good looking?" The consensus, however, is that Lopez is a good role model, and a good chambermaid.
But this is apparently no excuse for jumping out of your repulsive uniform and into your guests' Dolce and Gabbana ensembles, as Lopez does in what the press blurb describes as "an uncharacteristically frivolous moment". It is, you see, at this very moment that Fiennes's character walks into the room, and naturally mistakes La Lopez (resplendent in a $5,000 white coat and with only the merest whiff of Pledge about her) for a bone fide hotel guest. "You have to be careful," warns Stella. "Like trying on a guest's clothes, you wouldn't do that - you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to respect your guests' things." "And anyway," says Olga, "you don't have time to do that. You don't want to try on a guest's clothes, you want to finish your job and go!" she gesticulates wildly over the coffee cups. "Also the manager would probably come in..."
We speculate about whether Maid in Manhattan could ever happen in real life. Could a chambermaid and a wealthy guest ever fall in love and live happily ever after? Olga is perfectly adamant: "It's not gonna happen. "It's a film, it's not real. In real life, the guests are not interested in you. It's like the bit in the film when she's cleaning the bathroom floor - he didn't notice her. I've been there, it happens."
"Just because you're a maid," says Stella, "it doesn't mean you're nothing. But I think some people overlook you." Olga declares feistily that she doesn't care. "But that's not the point," Stella argues. "You have to get to know someone, not judge them on their job title. The reaction of the public in the film was "How can he be friendly with a maid? He's campaigning for the senate!" It was degrading."
In actual fact, Stella, Olga and Regina don't have much contact with the guests, "unless, maybe, a guest asks for this or that, when normally people are polite." says Stella. So the chances of meeting the man of your dreams as you plump up the pillows in the penthouse suite are pretty slim? "Yes, there may be a lot of important people staying in the hotel, with a lot of money, but you don't get to meet them," says Olga. And yes, there might be a rather well-chiselled gentleman in room 322, but you wouldn't offer yourself as room service. "You might say a person is cute," says Stella, "but you wouldn't confront them about it." And, no, even if they stumbled across Ralph Fiennes as they polished the bathtub, they wouldn't make a move.
We take to calling Fiennes "the man" because Olga, Stella and Regina aren't sure who he is. As a senatorial candidate with a shammy Bostonian transatlantic drawl he wasn't exactly hot cakes, spending most of the film's 105 minutes ruffling his dog's ears - and to my knowledge no man has ever been elected for ruffling his dog's ears, unless we count George Bush junior. One never quite believes that the sumptuous J-Lo, glowing lustily beneath her apron, would ever fall for the aquiline Mr Fiennes. She looks as if she might wound his pale Limey limbs with one foul swish of the duster.
Mr Fiennes, you see, is no Richard Gere. For the most part, this is something for which we must rejoice. However in the soft-focus world of the romcom, Gere is second only to Andrew McCarthy in Pretty in Pink, and one step above Josh Lucas in Sweet Home Alabama. And it is impossible to ignore the fact that Maid in Manhattan is basically Pretty Woman without the thigh-high PVC boots.
Olga sums up the similarities: "The man has a lot of money, the woman has less money and is lower class. And he chooses her because he loves her." For Regina, however, the stories weren't that similar. "I don't think they're the same. Marisa was working, she wasn't a prostitute, and she had a little boy..." she says. "And she wasn't always thinking about the..." she rubs her fingers together, "the money. In Pretty Woman, she's always thinking about that." And there was one more crucial difference: "The Pretty Woman story is very common - in real life it could easily happen to a prostitute," argues Regina. "But it couldn't happen to a maid." Why? She pauses and thinks. "She's too busy cleaning." "
above taken from guardian.
moi
v&r
