THE SECOND MOTHER (Que Horas Ela Volta)
Oscilloscope Laboratories
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: A-
Director: Anna Muylaert
Screenwriter:  Anna Muylaert
Cast:  Regina Casé, Camila Márdila, Michel Joelsas, Karine Teles, Lourenço Mutarelli, Helena Albergeria
Screened at: Critics’ DVD, NYC, 6/13/15

One of the better classic studies of social differences since George Bernard Shaw found an unspoken love between a professor and a sidewalk flower seller in “Pygmalion,” “The Second Mother” highlights the ways an allegedly liberal woman acts with condescension toward her long-employed maid.  More important, though, the often comic Brazilian film contrasts a maid’s affection toward her employer’s child whom she treats like a second mother against her dysfunctional relationship with her own daughter whom she abandoned years back to be brought up by another woman.

Even more important is the dazzling role of the title figure, Val (Regina Casé), a live-in domestic blessed with terrific dialogue by writer-director Anna Muylaert, whose previous contributions include “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” about a cigarette-addicted lower-middle-class guitar teacher is on the outs with her two sisters.  With “The Second Mother,” lower-middle-class domestic Val caters to her bosses, Bárbara (Karine Teles) and Carlos (Louenço Mutarelli), cooking, cleaning, and for the most raising their boy, Fabrinho (Michel Joelsas).   While young and old get along just dandy when director Muylaert describes the tenderness that Val has for Fabinho, this is nothing like that affection between Val and her daughter Jessica (Camila Márdila), who have barely seen each other for a decade but who are tentatively united when the bright, progressive young woman, studying for a college entrance exam, moves into the spacious home of the well-to-couple in São Paulo.

Young Jessica, however, nearly gets her mother fired as she has no regard for the social class rules.  She thinks nothing of having breakfast in the homeowners’ kitchen, even getting served by the woman of the house.  Nor does she intend to sleep on a mattress in her mother’s stuffy quarters, instead insisting on knocking off in the well-appointed guest room and splashing merrily with Fabrinho and his friend in the large, well maintained pool.

Everything that passes during the weeks of Jessica’s visit is unfolded naturally, including the housekeeper, who cooks, cleans, and nurtures, serving her employers beyond duty’s call, and who cares far more for Fabrinho than for her own teenage girl.  One of the embarrassing moments in the movie, but one we can readily understand, occurs when Carlos, the man of the house and the one responsible for its financing through an inheritance, falls for Jessica, even proposing marriage though he is already hitched to Barbara and seems twenty older than even his own wife.  If Jessica laughs in his face, this is right in character for a young woman who has no use for the usual regulations of social behavior.

Everyone changes with Jessica’s visit serving as a catalyst, especially Regina Casé’s lead character, a housekeeper wedded for decades to her servitude who wakes up to the need to find some balance in her life.   Not only is the story tightly written and flawlessly directed: it is anchored by a wholly riveting performance from Ms. Casé who, like the others in the story come across as authentic as your next-door neighbors.

The picture won the audience award at the Berlin Film Festival.  In Portuguese with English subtitles.

Unrated.  113 minutes.  © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – B+
Acting – A-
Technical – B+
Overall –  A-