Trabalhar cansa

In a city obsessed with success, middle-aged Otávio (Marat Descartes) has lost his job and his wife Helena (Helena Albergaria) has taken over an old convenience store to save the family. Bourgeois rule dictates that they must hire a maid, Paula (Naloana Lima), to clean the house and take care of their daughter, even if they spend Christmas Eve by candlelight. Keeping up appearances at all costs is this family’s inescapable drive. We are in a world in crisis, and things get stranger when dark fluids and odd sounds start to appear at the dusty, humid convenience store. Rojas and Dutra have a keen eye—and an especially attentive ear—for constructed spaces, as if drama were just as, if not more capable of emerging from such buildings than from faces and dialogue. The burden of crisis keeps eating away at walls, rooms, bodies and relationships. Strange occurrences and a monstrous figure invade the frame and the soundtrack. But the real atrocities reside in the architecture. True horror lurks in the structures of everyday bourgeois life. What’s scariest about this country are the windowless housemaid’s bedrooms and all the glass towers with special elevators for the servants. (Victor Guimarães)

In the presence of Juliana Rojas.