As usual this was a pick gleaned from various critics’ lists of the world’s most notable films. I’m pleased that after only a few years of watching and writing about cinema seriously I’ve watched enough Brazilian films to actually have a general opinion of them. The Second Mother in particular conforms to the pattern I’ve noted previously about Brazilian films that while grounded in society relies too heavily on the feel-good factor to be a truly serious film.
Val works as a live-in housemaid in São Paulo while her own daughter grows up in her home town in the countryside. Years pass and Val grows close to the only child of the family she works for but hardly ever visits her daughter Jéssica. One day Jéssica needs to come to the city to study for and take the university entrance examination. Val asks permission from her employers to have Jéssica temporarily stay with them while they search for accommodation and the family invites her to stay for as long as needed. When she arrives both the father of the family José and the son Fabinho take a shine to her but though the mother Barbara is polite she soon becomes annoyed. Val warns Jéssica to know her place as the daughter of the maid but Jéssica seems resentful of being ordered to behave like a second-class citizen. She takes advantage of the invitation to be treated as a member of the family which predictably creates all kinds of awkwardness and conflict.
Stories about a nanny becoming closer to the child she has been hired to take care of than her own children are commonplace enough to not be terribly interesting. What makes this portrayal stand out is how it forces a head on clash of different social classes. As Val explains even if the family invites a servant to make herself at home, it’s only ever out of politeness and as such the invitation is issued only in the expectation that it will be declined. As for Jéssica, her intelligence and her education makes her closer to being a peer of the affluent family despite her poor background as she converses easily with them about art and her ambitions. This leads her to being ignorant or even contemptuous of the norms that oblige the servants to behave in a deferential manner towards the family. It also sets up deliciously awkward situations in which Val is forced to serve her daughter as she sits at the table with the family while she herself has never sat there.
Unfortunately while The Second Mother is a film that knows where it wants to go, the way that it gets there is often clumsy. You get sense that the conflict is artificially manufactured as the plot contrives to find a way to keep Jéssica in the house long past the point where it has become uncomfortable for everyone involved. I also don’t like the incongruity between Jéssica’s naivety with regards to José’s motivations and her own life experience which is in any case far too on the nose in how it parallels Val’s own life. It might seem like nitpicking but I find that the more seriously a film tries to make some sort of statement about real society, the more apparent minor flaws become. It doesn’t help either that the ending is the kind of neat, feel-good ending that I would expect out of Hollywood.
Overall while The Second Mother is a fine film I think it’s definitely second tier and doesn’t reveal as much that is specific about Brazilian society as director Anna Muylaert seems to believe. I still like it but it isn’t as impressive as I’d hoped given its premise.