The Second Mother
2015 · Directed by Anna Muylaert
Original language: Portuguese
- drama
The story
After leaving her daughter Jessica in a small town in Pernambuco to be raised by relatives, Val spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself. As Fabinho’s university entrance exams approach, Jessica reappears in her life and seems to want to give her mother a second chance. However, Jessica has not been raised to be a servant and her very existence will turn Val’s routine on its head. With precision and humour, the subtle and powerful forces that keep rigid class structures in place and how the youth may just be the ones to shake it all up.
What it’s like
Clean modernist architecture in cool daylight: wide glass walls, pale marble floors, and a swimming pool that catches the afternoon glare, set against the cramped, warm-toned servant's quarters where the nanny sleeps. Muylaert frames much of it in calm, symmetrical compositions and long observational takes through doorways and corridors, so class lines are drawn into the space itself. The sound is mostly ordinary domestic noise, with a light, bouncy score that turns wry at the edges. Its vibe is tender, sharp, and wryly uncomfortable, the feeling of a sunny Sunday with a knot in the stomach. The pacing is unhurried and conversational, with comedy that arises from awkward silences and small social slips rather than set pieces. Emotional registers swing between warmth and sting as a mother and a daughter who have been kept apart try to find their footing in a household built on unspoken rules. The intensity is low: no graphic violence or gore, only verbal cruelty, humiliation, and emotional strain, with some brief sensual moments. It suits a thoughtful evening when you want something human and observant. It is for viewers who enjoy quietly political family drama and sharp, humane social observation.
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