Lessons From The Night

Lessons From The Night is a well-shot and interesting example of that small but significant sub-genre of documentary which asks people who think they know everything there is to know about a particular 'menial' job and those who perform it to think again.

Maia is a cleaning woman, working in the empty spaces left behind when the staff go home for the night. "I have a lot of time to be philosophical," she says, before sharing some of her - very astute - observations with director Adrian Francis and us. Through the course of the film we learn that, as is always the case with this sort of thing, that there is much more to Maia than first meets the eye and that she once held a career far different from this.

Although not breaking any new ground, anything which challenges people's preconceptions has got to be a good thing - and everyone who has ever worked as any sort of 'temp' or been scorned for their employment, will raise a cheer for Maia's quiet insistence that no one job is any 'better' than another.