THE 10-SECOND CRITIQUE

In too many towns like Charleston, Miss., where Paul Saltzman’s documentary “Prom Night in Mississippi” was shot, the racial divide lingers in the air like smoke from a distant fire.

Saltzman follows the senior class of 2008 as it plans and holds the first integrated prom in the school’s history, and the result is an exceedingly candid portrait of race and prejudice in a small town drawn mostly through interviews with the students and their parents.

One student, filmed in shadows because he believes his parents would disown him if they knew he supported integrating the prom, says, “They might be racist; they just don’t want the world to know.”

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‘The Maid’

Imagine if your family’s trusted live-in maid, who in her 23 years with you has helped raise the children, served the meals and essentially run the household, starts moving from servant to saboteur. That’s what happens in director Sebastian Silva’s quirky and warm “La Nana” (“The Maid”).

It’s a vague world for both the upper-class family and their under-class maid, as Silva examines the strange bonds that bind them together, seemingly for life. He sets the stage with the family’s surprise birthday party for Raquel.

Turning 40 jars something, and what follows is her funny but sad descent into rebellion.

Through it all, Raquel is looking for her real self, her place in the world; she just doesn’t know it yet. So we watch, and laugh, and hope that she will ultimately discover the person she is.