THE STORY – To avoid losing custody of her six-year-old daughter in Manila, Luz, an undocumented Filipina cleaner working in a luxury Swiss ski resort, must earn money at any cost – even if it means transgressing her own moral limits.
THE CAST – Mercedes Cabral, Alexis Manenti, Anna Luna & Hasmine Killip
THE TEAM – Dominik Locher (Director/Writer) & Honeylyn Joy Alipio (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 99 Minutes
Even before a face appears on screen, “Enjoy Your Stay” establishes its true protagonist: money. It rustles, is counted, smoothed out, and passed along. Swiss francs in vivid colors move from hand to hand as wages. In Dominik Locher’s third feature, cash is not merely a prop but the metronome of a world in which value is determined by visibility. It established that those who pay are attended to and those who clean disappear through the back entrance. Locher turns his gaze to those who make Switzerland’s luxurious image possible in the first place. In Verbier, undocumented Filipina women clean holiday chalets for an international clientele. They live together in housing provided by their employer; their passports are confiscated, and their working hours are long, with little to no rights. Officially, they are not even there, but in reality, these women are the ones who keep everything running.
At the center of that world stands Luz (Mercedes Cabral), a woman in her mid-thirties whose determination is palpable from the outset. She works quickly and efficiently, balancing pride and pragmatism. Every franc she earns has a purpose: her daughter Sofia in the Philippines. The child lives with Luz’s ex-husband, and the mother is saving toward the day when she will have enough money to become a permanent part of her life again. This hope is not sentimental fantasy but an economic calculation.
Then the fragile equilibrium collapses. During a video call with her daughter, Luz suddenly finds herself appearing on a nationally broadcast talk show. Her ex-husband has made their custody dispute public, forcing her into a live televised debate. The intimate connection through the screen becomes a media spectacle. Luz sits in Switzerland, trapped within the frame of a display, while her private life is turned into entertainment. The scene feels almost exaggerated, but it radically underscores how little control Luz has over her own narrative. Even her motherhood becomes a commodity. From this moment on, precarious routine turns into existential pressure. Luz promises to live on television to return home for her daughter’s birthday. When she counts her savings, she realizes it is not enough. Debt, outstanding repayments, and the desire to build a secure foundation for Sofia push her into a spiral of overtime and risky decisions. “Enjoy Your Stay” builds tension less through external action than through the gradual tightening of economic screws.
Hovering above it all is Thibault (Alexis Manenti), the manager of the cleaning company. He is not a one-dimensional antagonist but a man who blends control with apparent benevolence. His instructions are sober, almost polite, but his tone marks the hierarchy. Thibault knows the women depend on him and so exploits the system that protects him without ever needing to stage himself as a monster. Locher and his co-writer, Honeylyn Joy Alipio, refuse easy victim-perpetrator binaries. Luz is not portrayed as a martyr. She is ambitious, driven, and at times ruthless. The decisive moral turning point arrives when she begins recruiting new workers herself. She knows the conditions and the exhaustion and still persuades women from her own community to join, because the commission promises quicker income. In churches and through acquaintances, she seeks out compatriots willing to take the risk. Here, the film shows how exploitation reproduces itself: those at the bottom today may pass pressure further down tomorrow.
This ambivalence is the film’s greatest strength. Luz’s choices are understandable, yet never entirely justifiable. Solidarity becomes a bargaining chip, and her ambition turns into a survival strategy. The film is less interested in moral judgment than in the mechanics of a system that forces people to choose between loyalty and securing a future. Setting the story during Christmas and New Year intensifies the contrast between the rich and the unfortunate. While some celebrate upstairs, others work downstairs. While some raise a toast, others sweep up the remains.
As nuanced as the characters are and as clearly articulated as the social critique is, the contrasts between wealth and precarity are sharply drawn and, at times, almost didactic. Dramatically, the escalation follows recognizable patterns without becoming truly surprising. The emotional radicalism that the material might have allowed is reached only intermittently. Certain conflicts, particularly within the community, are introduced but not fully explored. The energy occasionally evokes a nervous, breathless social drama without ever dissolving entirely into chaos. Mercedes Cabral carries the narrative with an intense physical presence. In her performance, fatigue, ambition, and vulnerability coexist in proximity. She makes Luz a character not to be pitied, but to be taken seriously, showing her in her strength as well as in her missteps.
The result is a committed, sharply observed drama about invisibility and economic dependency. It is not a film that sends its audience home with hope, but neither does it wallow in misery. Instead, it shows how easily moral coordinates shift when money becomes the only measurable value.
