The Second Mother is a film about a set of social rules, which have been in place in Brazilian culture since colonial times and which continue to affect its emotional architecture to this very day.
Val (Regina Case) is the kind of live-in housekeeper who takes her work seriously. She wears a crisp maid’s uniform while serving perfect canapés; she attends to her wealthy São Paulo employers day in and day out while lovingly nannying their teenage son whom she’s raised since he was a toddler. Everyone and everything in the elegant house has its place until one day Val’s ambitious, clever daughter Jessica (Carmila Márdila) arrives from Val’s hometown to take her college entrance exams.
The backstory, which is integral to the plot, is that Val left her daughter in a small town to be raised by her father and his new wife. She then spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho (Michel Joelsas) and cleaning house and serving meals in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself.
Director Anna Muylaert started writing the script for The Second Mother 20 years ago when she had her first child. That is when she noticed the extent to which the task of raising a child is devalued in Brazilian culture. “In my social circles, rather than look after your own baby, more often you hired a live-in nanny and outsourced most of the work, considered tedious and draining. But those nannies very often have to leave their own kids with someone else in order to fit into that scheme.” That social paradox struck her as one of the most significant in Brazil because it is always the kids who lose out, both those of the employees and those of the nannies.
The question that is raised is can affection be bought and if so at what price? She didn’t set out to judge or glamourise the characters and their actions, merely to show the naked truth.
The dramatic structure is dry, almost mathematical. It starts out by describing the routines and rules that govern relations in an upper-class household in São Paulo. That done, the focus shifts to Jessica, the nanny’s daughter, who blows into the domestic setting with no experience of the house and so ends up crossing certain lines and occupying spaces she’s not supposed to. Of course, she’s expelled from those spaces that, historically, are off limits to her. She’s “put in her place”, only that “place” no longer exists. A slice-of-life reality piece, I found it fascinating and engaging.
Regina Case is excellent in the lead role, highly credible as the mother that has incredible respect and tolerance, and yet hiding a past that continues to haunt her. The shifting power balance is, not surprisingly, what really makes this movie the strong vehicle that it is. In storms this vibrant, vital, take-no prisoners young woman who is not prepared to play by society’s rules regarding a class-conscious society. She has personality to burn but becomes too hot to handle. Camila Márdila plays the role almost nonchalantly as if the whole thing is no big deal. At the beginning, her relationship with her mother is fraught because someone else has brought her up and she believes her mother is kowtowing when she need not.
It is also a story about the haves and have nots and about a sense of entitlement. Rated M, it scores a 7½ to 8 out of 10.
Director: Anna Muylaert
Cast: Regina Case, Camila Márdila
Release Date: 28 July 2016 (limited)
Rating: MA15+
Alex First
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television