Shortly after last year's Oscars, "Roma" from Mexico has attracted a lot of fans. It was selected for both the best picture and the best foreign language film at the same time (wouldn't it be unfair?)
The love and hatred of a woman at the bottom of society who worked as a nanny in a wealthy family was finally put on the big screen, and it also reflected the chaotic society during the Mexican Revolution.
A few days ago, I accidentally clicked on a movie, and I was suddenly amazed. It turns out that "Roma" is not the only movie about Latin maids in recent years, and it is not the most moving one.
"Second Mother", a 2015 film from Brazil. Similar protagonists, although this film has fewer big scenes than "Roma", the realistic family affection and the mapping to the society are not much at all. If you want me to say, this movie is better than "Roma".
The story takes place in a wealthy family in Sao Paulo, Brazil as a maid, helping them clean, cook and take care of the young master.
In the blink of an eye, ten years later, the young master has graduated from high school, and Val continues to work hard to take care of the family. It seems that the family treats her well. Just occasionally chatting with the maid who works with the child, Val will be secretly hurt.
One day, she suddenly received a call from her daughter who had not been in contact with her for many years.
Val asks the hostess to let her college-applicant daughter live with her for a few days before she finds a house. The hostess readily agreed.
I haven't seen each other for many years, and her daughter has grown into a slender girl, and Val is simply happy. Jessica grew up in modern society and believes that everyone should be equal. When she came to the house, Jessica was very dissatisfied with her mother living in a small room in the basement of someone else's mansion, so she just occupied the host's guest room. Her mother thought she was uneducated, but she didn't think so.
At the same time, the hostess continues to show affection to Jessica and acts more and more excessively, while the hostess's dissatisfaction with the servant's daughter sleeping in her guest room grows day by day.
The relationship between Val and her daughter is getting worse and worse. The night before the entrance exam, her daughter leaves in the rain after a quarrel. The next day, I learned that the young master failed the exam, but Val's daughter got a very high score. Excited, Val finally resigned from the hostess and decided to reunite with his daughter.
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The story seems simple, but it shows the relationships and contradictions of several people vividly. At the beginning of the film, Val, ten years ago, is on the phone with his daughter. This scene alone fully explained the main characters and the relationship between them. The maid said "I love you" to her daughter, and the young master was a little jealous. And the hostess of this house is too busy with her work to take care of her son, so the maid is more like a mother to the young master.
The hostess seems to be polite to the servants, but she always takes the attitude of being superior . Even in the climax of the film, Jessica is all irritated after being injured. After Jessica and her son played in the pool, she said that she saw mice in the pool and had the water drained.
The male master inherits the property of his father, lives in a big house, and has endless money to spend. When you have nothing to do and paint, life can be described as a leisurely leisure. But cowardly by nature, his wife married him for money, and her desire for property surpassed her concern for him. And the arrival of the beautiful young girl Jessica made him yearn for love again. Let her stay in a guest room, take her on a tour of the building, give her his son's ice cream, and even propose to her.
Jessica is a well-behaved child, but she broke up with her father because she was pregnant and gave birth to a child at a young age. She moved to the big city where her mother worked to apply for college, and the child stayed with her father. She has a lot of complaints about her mother for not taking care of her for many years, but she feels guilty for keeping her young son at home, so she understands her mother somewhat. Her years of disappointment with her own mother vented through her dissatisfaction with the current state of her life. She didn't understand why her mother could put up with these pampered rich people, and hoped that she could move out and stop being angry at other people's homes. The two also quarreled about this time and time again. Of course, these quarrels ended in disappointment that they had not received maternal love for many years.
Our protagonist, Val, came to work here after she divorced her husband more than ten years ago. Her love for her daughter is unquestionable, but because of her ex-husband's excessive demands, she was unable to visit her daughter, so she had to work hard and spend the money she earned. Send it back to my daughter for living. Her maternal love is also placed on the young master who is the same age as her daughter. When her daughter suddenly returned to her own life, she was overwhelmed with excitement, but she missed her daughter's growth, and she didn't know the beautiful and confident girl in front of her. I don't understand what my daughter said about equality. The daughter couldn't understand that she had lived in this house for so many years and had never even entered their swimming pool. After her daughter left in anger, Val finally realized that she had misplaced her focus. She was determined to try to understand her daughter, and finally resigned and left. It was also the first time in so many years that she spent generously. She asked her daughter to take her little grandson by plane and covered the expenses herself. Ten years of hardship made her understand that she finally had a chance to spend time with her daughter, and this time she wouldn't screw it up again.
Several elements in the film run through the entire story.
swimming pool. At the beginning of the film, Val is by the pool, watching the young master swim and calling his daughter. The hostess later drained the water because Jessica was playing in the pool. And Jessica was sitting by the pool when she called back home to ask about her young son, just as Val had called her back then. Only this time, the water in the pool was drained, and the situation finally improved. When Val decided to quit his job to be with his daughter, he finally stood in the pool for the first time. The swimming pool here is a symbol of their breaking the barrier. When the pool is full, they seem to be separated by the ocean, and when the water is drained, they finally understand each other. Val finally stood in the middle of the pool and smiled happily, which was also a symbol of her breaking authority for the sake of family.
A cup (a cup is not a tragedy). This cup was a birthday gift from Val to the hostess. She asked the store and it was said to be a very modern thing, but she couldn't understand it. According to the picture, the white cup was placed on the black coaster, and the black was placed on the white. , everything is the opposite. The hostess accepted her gift on the surface, but actually looked down on the cheap goods she bought. When she left, she secretly brought this set of cups out again. On the table in her home, she said that this set of cups is just like her daughter, with a beautiful personality. When two people drink coffee, the black cup is placed on the black coaster, and the white cup is placed on the white coaster. This is also the breaking of her own cognition. At the end of the film, she, who has been serving dishes for others, picked up the cup by herself for the first time and drank coffee with a smile.
There are no fancy camera tricks in the whole film, and no strange special effects. The director was smart enough to keep the story in a limited number of scenes to save costs. But it is this simple shooting method that makes the simple story of the mother and daughter more empathetic, and the director has more room to play with the camera angle. For example, when the hostess and the hostess are eating, the camera is always placed in the kitchen, spying on their lives from the cracks in the door, which is exactly Val's perspective.
The lack of scenes is all used in the setting of details in the story, whether it is a swimming pool, a cup, or the transition from a bus to an airplane, the whole story is very attentive in details. Even if ordinary audiences don't notice these details, they will be able to feel them because they are related to the plot.
Although the blockbuster is cool, the touching story is always the real heart. I give this film 9 points, from the story to the shooting, to the performance of the actors are all very good, it is a rare and detailed film in recent years.
Okay, that's all for today, let's talk about it next time. (Welcome to the public account: Little Red Riding Hood chatting about movies)
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