(Brazil,
112 min.)
Written and directed by Anna Muylaert
Starring: Regina Casé, Camila Márdila,
Karine Teles, Michel Joelsas, Lourenço Mutarelli
“When will she be back?”
The mother/daughter reunion happens quickly in The Second Mother when Val receives news
that her daughter, Jéssica (Camila Márdila) is coming to São Paulo for school.
Val, excited to see the daughter she’s been missing and supporting from afar,
nervously asks Dona Bárbara if Jéssica may stay in the servants’ quarters. Dona
Bárbara agrees—she happily agrees, actually—and even offers to get a fine
mattress for Jéssica to use as a bed. The servant/master relationship lives
harmoniously in Dona Bárbara’s house (with the Dona/’Mrs.’ Title appropriately noting
rank, class, and distinction) and reflects a larger cultural class structure in
Brazil in which the fairer citizens take a stand of privilege over their more
darkly skinned countrymen.
When Jéssica comes to stay with her mother, she’s
flabbergasted by numerous circumstances of Val’s life. A dinky servants’
quarters? A cot on the floor? Different ice creams for ‘us’ and ‘them’? No ‘rats’
in the pool? Jéssica, ever the rebellious teen, arrogantly tests the limits of Bárbara’s
hospitality by inviting herself to stay in the guest room, and then mirroring
the family’s own behaviour in an effort to break down the divide.
What makes a person so insecure in the world that she lets
others treat her as below them? The
Second Mother asks this question before answering it in turn as Muylaert offers a hopeful message as
characters advance by their own will, effort, and ability to see through the
wall. However, those who remain cozy in their privilege remain at a standstill
and lose what others gain.
Writer/director Anna Muylaert delves into this deep-rooted
social system in The Second Mother
and interrogates how strongly the ideology lives in both Bárbara and Val. Bárbara’s
a bit of a snooty one, while Val is doubly mortified, not only by Jéssica’s
arrogance, but by her ignorance of the unspoken hierarchy that divides the home
into two radically different worlds at the kitchen wall. The film uses the
spatial relations of both the house and the frame to create different social
orders and build considerable tension for Val as she navigates the roles of
maid and mother while respecting the borders of the house. The way space
defines and controls Val is an especially fine stroke of direction.
Testing the strength of this wall and its foundation bit by
bit, The Second Mother pushes Jéssica into scenario after scenario
that frames her and her mother as second-class citizens in their own home. The
delicately scripted and precisely directed domestic drama interrogates the
longstanding system and ultimately breaks it down. The film recalls 2011’s The Help with its dramatization of
deeply internalized structures based on class and colour, but The Second Mother rejects any of the
colourful sugarcoatings that make The
Help such a sweet, if problematic, affair. Muylaert avoids large emotional
payoffs and The Second Mother
firmly sidesteps sentimentality. The film offers a happy ending, but it invites
the audience to linger, rather than leave light on their feet.
The Second Mother, which is Brazil’s official
submission to compete in the race for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015
Academy Awards, lets the strength of its characters carry the rippling allegory
that sees one household as a microcosm for the nation. Casé gives an excellent
and understated performance as Val, a woman who knows her place and sadly
accepts it. The maid’s love and devotion to both her children, Jéssica and
Fabinho, makes the class divide especially effective as The Second Mother shows the arbitrariness of drawing distinctions
between countrymen, neighbours, and even family members for the sake of
tradition. This belief doesn’t hold with the upcoming generation, though, as Márdila
and Joelsas are far more liberal in their performances. The kids are loose and
relaxed compared to their uptight mothers—Teles is especially good at playing
the uppity Bárbara—and the film uses Val’s anxiety to uphold the very standard
that reduces her as a compelling point of wonder. This wonderfully acted film
is simple, yet complex as one mother nurtures children from two very different
worlds. Whether Val can ever go back, however, is another question.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
The Second Mother screens in Ottawa at The Mayfair.