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With its share of metaphors, the tale is certainly one of the most relevant genres to imply strong messages. This is what the Brazilian film accurately proves Good manners directed by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra, to see or re-watch on Arte.Tv until January 7, 2021.
The film opens like the first Disney cartoons: the opening titles, the soft music. The viewer is rocked, it could be The Sleeping Beauty, when suddenly, the ringing of a telephone makes us switch to the contemporary world. We are in São Paulo and Clara (Isabél Zuaa) is interviewed to become the nanny of the future child of Ana (Marjorie Estiano) who is pregnant. While everything seems to be off to a bad start, since Clara gave false references for her candidacy, she is still hired by the future mother. From this first chord, the film will not cease to become unpredictable and haunting.
Mixture of genres
Beyond the tale, the film draws on different genres: musical, romance, horror film and fantasy film. Yet no lack of consistency, this mixture enriches the film while making it surprising. But if a little of the aesthetics of all these categories are found in the whole, it is especially in the fantastic and in the tale that the film draws its main sources of inspiration.
To make the city of São Paulo strange, the technique of matte painting was used, a process that allows to create sets and then integrate them into a filmed scene. This gives an offbeat aspect which announces and reinforces the fantastic atmosphere which gradually invades the story. It is also a way of presenting a modern version of fairy tales: the buildings are the new inaccessible castles and the favelas the new dangerous forests.
In the various interviews given by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra, this mixture of genres is always mentioned. Their inspirations can be found as well on the design side of Mary Blair for The Sleeping Beauty than that of Brazilian folklore in which werewolves (werewolf) are very present. Different influences which are deftly revisited for this very politically charged contemporary Brazilian tale.
Break taboos
Good manners is divided into two very different parts articulated around the birth of the child. The film may take place in the largest city in Brazil, the first part takes place almost behind closed doors in Ana’s apartment. The luxurious accommodation overlooks São Paulo: ” It’s big here Clara said entering it the first time. Ana becomes an outcast to those around her, is bored in this glass tower. At the start, each of the two women plays her role and the border is clear: Clara is black and poor in the service of Ana who is white and rich. But the feature film gently transgresses all of Brazil’s main taboos: racial taboos, social taboos and sexual taboos.
After the birth of the child and a seven-year ellipse (a very symbolic figure in the tales), the second half of the film opens. Exit, the comfort and luxury of the heights, Clara finds herself in the shallows of a favela. Between the two neighborhoods there is a bridge that must not be crossed but which obviously will be. The aesthetic contrast is strong, decidedly more fantastic: digital special effects are multiplying and the outside world is more present, threatening.
It is by the choice of the metaphor or on the contrary frontally that the film tackles various hot topics of current events. The figure of the werewolf, embodied by the child, asks: what is a monster? Why is there rejection when it is not his fault? The film also highlights the inequalities very present in Brazilian society: with Jair Bolsonaro, as President of the Federal Republic, an openly homophobic and racist man, the film acts as a manifesto.
Good manners marks the second collaboration on a horror film between Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra after Work fatigue in 2012, presented in Cannes in the Un Certain Regard selection. Well received by critics and the public, he was awarded the Jury Prize and the Critics’ Prize of the Gérardmer Festival as well as the Special Prize of the International Jury of Locarno.
To see or re-watch on Arte.Tv until January 7, 2021.
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