Writer/director Carolina Gonzalez Valencia’s How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps is a hybrid-documentary that takes an amazing true story of a domestic worker’s journey in the U.S.A. and fuses it with fiction, animation, dance, and dream-like sequences to portray a story of hard work and redemption, as well as the quest for the ever-elusive American dream. The filmmaker’s mother, Beatriz Valencia (the filmmaker’s mother) came to the States as a young labourer with wide eyes and the promise that hard work would equal opportunity and comfort in the land of milk and honey.
Of course, that work can take years, and it separates fractured families from their loved ones, leaving them waiting to be reunited on the boat ride over to a better life. But as Gonzalez Valencia explores her mother’s past and choices, by re-casting her mother as the bestselling author of her autobiographical adventure from rages to riches, there is a bonding and exploration that takes shape as a life’s work and walk reforms as the simple steps it takes to get all the work complete and on time. Separating the reality the director remembers, and the woman she wishes to know more about, the narrative is dissected into a literal 10-step cleaning method: start a load of laundry to multitask while you clean, collect all trash from every room and replace bags, gather misplaced items into baskets to return them to their proper rooms. All these rudimentary tasks made up Beatriz Valencia’s day-to-day ritual. But those steps, once laborious, are now crafted into chapters that stretch and strip away at the elements of a person and an existence that defied the odds and won, with grit and determination, a place at the table.
“…Gonzalez Valencia explores her mother’s past and choices, by re-casting her mother as the bestselling author of her autobiographical adventure from rages to riches…”
How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps also reconnoiters the intersection of immigration, labor, motherhood, and sacrifice. Many are called, but few go all the way. Many come to work like demons for a promise that is increasingly unlikely to pay dividends. So, for this tale of a Colombian-born domestic worker, her comrades in the cleaning trade, and the generation that has and will prosper from the long-suffering and silent sweating of their resilient mothers in the land of liberty and justice for all, this picture stands as a testament to heart, soul, and spirit. The way the director fuses these themes into the fictional beats makes them more impactful. The blending of the fictional and the factual is more about bridging the understanding between generations. The harsh realities that were once commonplace are being re-examined. The decisions parents make for the possible betterment of their future, while not obvious to the children, can have resounding implications. This is witnessed in a number of scenes that are fascinating and dramatic in equal measure.
Playfully straying from convention, How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps smashes the biographical and the fantastical together to make a phantasmagorical microcosm of an epic life quest for progress and understanding. Beatriz Valencia’s road may be fashioned out of misfortune and misunderstanding, but the struggle is the glory. When coupled with her daughter’s creative dissection, it is clear that their bond, as well as their bond with the enraptured audience, is much more than concrete.
"…playfully straying from convention..."
