Opening in New York and Los Angeles on August 28th and nationally a few days later (screening information is at oscilloscope.net), the Brazilian film “A Second Mother” is not the first I have seen that features a domestic servant as a lead character but it is one that joins a short list of those that are true works of art as opposed to something like “The Butler” that work only as melodrama and fitfully at best.
Set in Sao Paulo, it stars veteran actress Regina Casé as Val, a sixtyish woman who has worked for a wealthy family for more than a decade and who is like a “second mother” to teenaged son Fabinho (Michel Joelsas), an amiable pot-smoking slacker. Val is one of those maids who are often referred to as “one of the family” but who knows her place. She is capable of scolding Carlos (Lourenco Mutarelli), the bald and bearded owner of a sprawling modern-looking house with a swimming pool, for raiding the refrigerator but would not dream of sitting at the kitchen table with him and his family. Class lines are sharply delineated in the household even if the rules are not posted on a bulletin board. Along with the chauffeur and another maid, Val is grateful for steady work and kindness of her boss but knows her place. When she buys a coffee serving set for Barbara (Karine Teles), the woman of the house who lives a life reminiscent of Bravo TV’s tacky housewives series, she is reprimanded for serving guests with it at Barbara’s birthday party. Don’t use that one, she is told, use the Swedish set instead. In that brief exchange, director Anna Muylaert conveys an unequal relationship that a sociologist might have taken ten thousand words to describe. full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/21/maid-to-order-scenes-of-class-struggle-in-the-household/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
