The Second Mother is one of the best movies that I’ve seen on age, gender and class as a function of money and/or education. The story is simple, but the execution is masterful. Val has lived and worked with a three-person family for ten years in Sao Paulo in order to financially support Jessica, whom she has not seen in all this time. When Jessica visits the city to take an exam, her mother invites Jessica to stay with her after her employer insists. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
The title of the movie has numerous meanings-literal and metaphorical in ways that I won’t entirely spoil. Val acts as a second mother to her employer’s son, but her boss, Dona Barbara feels like the second mother because her son clearly prefers Val because she spent more time with him. When we delegate our intimate duties to others, it has unexpected ramifications. I’ve been both Jessica and Dona Barbara though less specious about trying to cushion the professional intimacy awkwardness by creating fiction and calling someone family unless they really were like family. Inviting someone into your home can lead to socioeconomic confusion because of the nature of a home. There are unspoken rules. The employers can enter any space, but Val cannot enter certain spaces though she makes the comfort of those spaces possible. Without her, there is no home. She knows everything about them, but they know nothing about her. She gives. They take, but they pay her so they can take. The implicit question is can you really pay someone for loving your child and don’t you kind of owe them more; thus why they call her family.
It was intriguing that initially Barbara tries to act as a second mother to Jessica despite her clear discomfort and annoyance. On some level, she knows that reciprocating is the right thing to do, especially since it will cost her nothing, but Val was a threat that Barbara could tolerate because Val was functioning in a socially appropriate manner whereas Jessica threatens all her positions directly either by supplanting her or becoming a member of the family. Karine Teles, who plays Barbara, acts in a way that supplements the script and suggests that perhaps she was not always well off, but marriage and fame raised her socioeconomic status. She is hyper concerned about how things should look. When Jessica arrives, her husband’s interest in Jessica creates the first upheaval in the house and punctures the fiction that Barbara is in charge when he pronounces that Jessica will stay in the guest room. Barbara is only pretending to be the boss, but the person who holds the purse strings is. Later on, her husband explicitly confirms this to Jessica that he inherited money. The men of the house, Dr. Carlos, the husband, and the son converge in the space on Jessica’s position the minute that she enters their space, the living room and dining room. While Jessica is not intending to sexually attract them, they instinctually are awakened by her presence and act differently around her that they usually do. The son’s friends jokingly flirt with Val, but they playfully and physically tease Jessica in an age appropriate way that alarms Barbara and Val in a primal way. Barbara then officially reinstates the rules of the house regarding where the help can physically be present in the house.
Val is equally uncomfortable though delighted with her daughter’s presence because Jessica jeopardizes her job. She resents how comfortable Jessica becomes in a space that Val has created and occupied for a decade. Michelle Obama said, “We love our boys, and we raise our girls.” She chastises her daughter, but spoils her fictional son. It makes sense because she sees Jessica as more vulnerable and at risk if she doesn’t obey the rules. It is also easier to love someone who is less likely to get hurt so you are less likely to be hurt. There are no rules if you are rich, and there is always a safety net. I loved how the camera lingered in spaces that were briefly empty anticipating a person’s return, particularly during the party after she serves tea. Jessica becomes like a mother to Val by opening up her eyes to the possibility that she deserves to enjoy the better things in life too. Val keeps a kind of hope chest in her room in the hopes that one day, she will be able to have her own home. When she realizes that Jessica’s willingness to traverse spaces that don’t belong to her in turn opens up Val’s world, she is joyful because being able to occupy a forbidden space makes you as special as the people who once exclusively occupied it.
Jessica is a hard character to play because if you go only a few degrees more in any direction, you become a villain. You could be seen as a temptress, resentful or spoiled. Camila Mardila avoids these pitfalls beautifully. She looks at the world in a way that no one else does in The Second Mother. Her introduction is unexpected. She literally approaches her mother from behind, not as a guest usually arrives. She observes everyone before they notice her. Jessica is immediately alarmed at the situation and correctly suggests that she should find other accommodations. She knows that she is in someone else’s home. She takes everyone at face value when they invite her into their space and accepts her mother’s employer’s generosity. She is furious at fiction presented as reality: her mom’s fiction of prosperity during her brief visits home; and the fiction of hospitality when she is not a guest, but a pest. She is outraged at the conditions that her mom lives in, and she also offers to help her mother with her duties, which everyone refuses. She wants to be an architecture student against all odds and create space, which makes sense because she does not know her place. “I don’t think I’m better, Val. I just don’t think I’m worse.” She is innocently open-more stunned than offended by the true nature of the husband’s interest and a contemporary oblivious to the son’s possible interest, which even he may not be conscious of. She correctly says that they are not her bosses and resents her mother choosing the job over her daughter, but I was surprised that she did not have an underlying practical financial concern. She simply sees herself as an equal.
If I had one criticism of The Second Mother, it would be the absence of explicit discussion of financial worries. On one hand, affordable housing is clearly depicted as a problem with landlords implacably holding all the power, but neither Val nor Jessica express concerns about how they will pay for the place or where they will find the next job. They act like it will all work out and trust me, when you are or were poor, you don’t think like that. While the end may seem optimistic, and it is as happy and realistic as it can be, I think the open-endedness and uncertainty still lingers perfectly.
The men of The Second Mother are not portrayed as venal violators of personal space, but it is shocking how they have an expectation of physical comfort and availability from the women in the house who have no actual relationship to them, which unintentionally places the women at odds with each other and jeopardizes their security. They kind of steal and separate Jessica from her mother by demanding her attention, and that she entertain them. She finds them intellectually interesting and is just as eager to interact with them because they share the same interest, but they are more like vampires borrowing her enthusiasm, vitality, awareness whereas they usually are self-medicating, asleep, shut off or disinterested from the world. The first time that we see the family together at the table when Jessica arrives, they are not talking to each other and are just using their smart phones silently at the dining table. She is like a living, breathing smart phone. The father later is shown silently jealous of the son for being able to be close to Jessica. The son has the ideal conditions, but can’t compete with Jessica. Of course, he doesn’t have to because his parents can buy him a good future. They know on a visceral level that Jessica is more alive and are attracted to it, but nothing in their life has prepared them to cultivate that feeling in themselves so they achieve it through others.
I enjoyed The Second Mother so much that I may try to check out the other films by the director, Anna Muylaert, but sadly they don’t seem to be widely available in the US. Even if you hate subtitles, this film is worth the effort.