We Are More Than Stereotypes
”The Second Mother” (Que Horas Ela Volta?, in Portuguese) is a Brazilian National Drama of 2015 directed by Anna Muylaerte. The movie was nominated for many awards in movie festivals and managed to win in numerous of them, among them the Best script at the RiverRun International Film Festival, Best Film by UPCA Trophy in 2015 and by the Grand Prix of Brasilian Cinema in 2016, besides being reviewed by Abraccine as the Best Brasilian Feature Film in 2015.
The film portrays Val’s story, a domestic worker in São Paulo who serves for an upper middle class family. Portraying subtly the life trajectory of this Recife woman who had to leave her daughter in order to earn a living in the big city and economically maintain the girl — her daughter, Jessica.
The film doesn’t expose any stereotypes of Brazilian people. In contrast, it represents the existing reality, showing what life is like for many people who live in the countryside and look for new opportunities in big cities. During the narrative, you can see how big Brazil is, showing the difficulties that exist in having to move from one end of the country to the another without having many economic resources to spare.
It can also be seen that there is still a white elite that thinks it is superior for its money and despises the less fortunate, this is elucidated when Jessica (Val’s daughter — The nordestian that goes to São Paulo to was babysitter and subsequently domestic servants in Bárbara and Carlos’s house) arrives at the home of her mother’s bosses. She wants to study architecture in one of São Paulo’s colleges with the most difficult entrance exam. However, it is the same one in which the bosses’ son, Fabinho, wants to study urban planning — managing to show with this competition a certain dispute between classes that is emphasized by parents and not by young people.
The movie can portray exactly what it is to be a Brazilian, showing the joys and sadness that go through our hearts. And, one can venture to say that even though many times this sadness fills the hearts of middle and lower class workers, who strive daily , they always hope that things will be better and always have a big smile to solve their troubles.
Brazilians are cheerful, smiling, and receptive but we also have our individualities. This can be verified with Mistress Bárbara being receptive to Jessica, but didn’t like her presence many times, even saying that a mouse entered her pool after the teenager had been thrown in the pool by Fabinho.
It also breaks the stereotype that people from the countryside of Brazil don’t have an education and that only the rich go to popular colleges — as seen in the moment when Jéssica obtains approval and Fabinho doesn’t. Moreover, the narrative also goes against what is often shown by Hollywood, which sums up Brazil to beaches, bikinis, carnival and corruption, always focusing on Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and forgetting the large amount of cities and states that there are here. However, The Second Mother has broken these paradigms and gained space in international cinemas, exposing another view of Brazil and, in some speeches, extolling the beauties of other places in the country, such as when Fabinho shows Australia’s beaches to Val and she says that looks like those in Recife -
Another important part to highlight is the fact that many times Brazil is represented for its fauna and flora. However, that isn’t the reality of the whole of Brazil. Determining São Paulo for the movie’s location was a perfect choice for everyone to see that many parts of the country have big centers with the buildings, constructions, and modernities that exist around the world.
The film really manages in small scenes, in small details, to build the relationships in which many are able to identify themselves. It is part of the Brazilian reality that Northeasterners migrate mainly to downtown São Paulo to work in lower-paid positions — as cleaners, drivers, gardeners, cookers, nannies, or even in multiple functions — to send money to their families who remain in the countryside, taking actual care of a person of a family that is not their own and only economic care of their real family.
In the movie, the boss (Mrs. Barbara) says to Val that, while her daughter was inside her house, she should limit her presence from the kitchen door to the service area because she was bothered by the girl’s presence. We can make an analogy of this speech to what happens in the world of cinema when Brazil is portrayed, always reducing a multicultural place to just simple characteristics of an almost rooted pre-concept. It shows the Brazilians as rascals (Joe Carioca), who only live in slums and forests (e.g. Fast and Furious and Rio).