A crowdpleaser that managed to fool many critics is likely too shallow for local audiences
Brazilian production Que Horas Ela Volta? (styled The Second Mother in English), written and directed by Anna Muylaert, won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance as well as the Audience Award and the top prize in the Panorama section at Berlin. It also amassed good deal of critical acclaim. Due to the issues it addresses, some foreign critics have compared it to Lucrecia Martel’s masterpiece La ciénaga (The Swamp).
Now, that makes no sense whatsoever. In fact, I seriously doubt many Argentine film critics and viewers will find it realistic. And for a good reason: they are likely to be familiar with the social scenario, which is common in many Latin American countries. Of course, so is the director, but she opted to go the Hollywood way rather than the Brazilian one.
The story goes like this: Val (Regina Casé) is a live-in-maid for a well-off family in São Paulo. One day and pretty much out of the blue, she announces that her teen daughter Jessica (Camila Márdila), whom she hasn’t seen in ten years, is coming to town to apply to a prominent university. So she asks her employer and household head Barbara (Karine Teles) to allow her daughter to live with her in the house for a short while until they can find an affordable place they can move to. Not without some reluctance, Barbara agrees.
But when Jessica arrives, things begin to change. She’s not really keen on obeying the unwritten house rules and boundaries live-in-maids are expected to follow. Not that she is bad-mannered or ill-bred, but she doesn’t hesitate to point out how much she disagrees with the social order.
As an example, she doesn’t like her mum’s small room, which she’s supposed to share. So she indirectly suggests she would like to have the large, comfy guest room. Barbara’s husband Carlos (Lourenco Mutarelli) says she can do so. In addition, he tells her she can eat the expensive ice cream they buy for their teen son, Fabinho (Michel Joelsas), who was practically raised by Val because his parents are always too busy with their jobs and social calendar. So it’s only a matter of time until Jessica plunges into the large swimming pool meant for family members only.
The thing is that Que Horas Ela Volta? is a comedy designed to stand also as a drama, but built upon stereotypes on class difference, precisely when it pretends to be the exact opposite. Val is an ever kind, hard-working maid who never wants anything more than what she’s given. And she’s happy with that. Barbara is a competitive professional woman stuck in a loveless marriage. She’s unsatisfied, high-strung and unable to live a different life. Carlos is a kind man who talks calmly, doesn’t pay much attention to his wife and is sort of infatuated with Jessica. Other than that, he has nothing to do in the film. As for Fabinho, it’s hard to say what he is like since he’s also an underwritten character. And Jessica — well, she’s the rebel who’s also smart and well-learned.
It’s hard to say what’s more annoying: the director’s overall sugarcoated gaze in dealing with a multifaceted reality so superficially (the many confrontations between Jessica and Val start and end in just a few minutes), the dialogue filled with ready-to-use lines that turn characters into concepts, or Regina Casé’s over-the-top, histrionic performance that’s meant to draw empathy from viewers. It’s just too easy to make a film with these traits. It’s a formula that may work for other stories and other genres, but here, it backfires spectacularly.
Unlike Chilean director Sebastián Silva’s The Maid (La nana), a largely down-to-earth character study of an alienated maid who’s worked for the same upper-class family for more than 20 years, Anna Muylaert’s Que Horas Ela Volta? may mean well but ends up being a rather inauthentic, demagogic take on class friction with a little credible happy ending that ultimately preserves the status quo. A crowd pleaser that managed to fool many critics too.
Production notes
Que horas ela volta? (Brazil, 2015) Written and directed by Anna Muylaert. With Regina Casé, Michel Joelsas, Camila Márdila, Lourenço Mutarelli. Cinematography: Barbara Alvarez. Editing: Karen Harley. Running time: 110 minutes.
@pablsuarez
