As boas maneiras

Lycanthropy has inspired some great films and AS BOAS MANEIRAS is no exception. In the city of São Paulo, a 21-year-old woman is pregnant and completely alone. Her material wealth cannot overcome her inexplicable helplessness. As she explains to Clara, who she has hired as a kind of maid, neither her father nor her brothers have called her for her birthday. The relationship between Ana and Clara will become something diferent in a few days: eroticism will displace class asymmetry, to such an extent that when the creature in Ana’s womb enters the world, Clara will be destined to raise it. What follows is a slow journey down the long path of motherhood, in which Clara will try to tame the fierce instinct of her charge. In TRABAJAR CANSA, an indeterminate primitivism was used to explore the miseries of contemporary neo-liberalism in Brazil. Here, the ostensible social context of the film’s first minutes enters a mythical dimension that proves liberating on every single level: the framings, the exquisite art design and cinematographer Rui Poças’ absolute mastery of lighting. São Paulo is transformed into a fantastical city whose arrogant modernity lives side by side with the superstitious and the archaic. (Roger Koza)

In the presence of Juliana Rojas.