THE SECOND MOTHER (Anna Muylaert). 112 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (August 28). Rating: NNNN
Watch online: iTunes
Latin America’s culture of live-in housekeepers has long been a fecund subject for the region’s filmmakers. The latest, from Brazil’s Anna Muylaert (The Year My Parents Went On Vacation), distinguishes itself by focusing on the irony of a housekeeper devoting her energies to her employers’ family at the expense of her own.
Val (Regina Casé) has spent so many years doting on Fabinho (Michel Joelsas) that she’s eclipsed Fabinho’s actual mother, Bárbara (Karine Teles), in his affections. Yet Val is treated as a second-class inhabitant in the home of her affluent, coolly condescending São Paulo bosses – a fact she remains blind to until her estranged daughter Jéssica (Camila Márdila) comes to visit. Unable to tolerate her mother’s obsequiousness or Bárbara’s imperiousness, Jéssica becomes a catalyst for domestic upheaval.
Largely adhering to a spare aesthetic of wide shots and few cuts, Muylaert fashions The Second Mother into a low-key comedy of manners, emphasizing class difference through careful attention to behaviour, objects and architecture. Some of her characters are mere caricatures, but the general sense of untenable boundaries between people who are in effect a sort of family is strongly felt.
