How the ‘The Second Mother’ addresses representation in an international context

In recent years, the participation of South American and especially Brazilian cinema in international festivals has increased consistently, as well as the box office results abroad. More than portraying a local reality, some of the most acclaimed movies also appeal to a diverse audience worldwide. One movie, in particular, could be studied in order to discuss it further: The Second Mother, written and directed by Anna Muylaert, that figured out as a major successful Brazilian movie in 2015.

According to the director’s own description, The Second Mother (originally Que Horas Ela Volta? in Portuguese) is a “social drama about a woman, Val, who could not raise her daughter [Jessica] because she was working as a nanny for somebody else’s son. The film starts when this daughter looks for her, and they have the chance to fix the past” (Nicholson, 2015). The plot develops to show generational and social differences between the mother and the daughter, whose presence exposes the unspoken class barriers that are present in a subtle way in the movie context, but also in the Brazilian society. This film helps to portray the late up raising of a social layer that has been neglected by the Brazilian politics, but happened to be relatively empowered in the past 10 years.

The receptivity that the film had among international audiences, especially in European countries*, was a surprise for the standards of Brazilian film industry. The two female leads (Regina Casé and Camila Márdila) shared the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting at the Sundance Film Festival 2015. Later on, The Second Mother won the Panorama Audience Award at the 65th Berlin Film Festival, among many other festival awards. In the Netherlands, it figured in the 16th position in the top 100 films of 2015 (FilmvanDaag, 2015). This huge success was then completed with the movie been sold for 25 countries (Nicholson, 2015). Film critics such as Geoff Berkshire (2015) claims a “culturally specific tale with the universal appeal” to be the reason for such an achievement, and consider the movie to occupy “a rare middle ground between genteel and intellectual world cinema”.

When The Second Mother was sold to foreign distributors and screened extensively throughout European countries, its audiences could relate to a high degree of locality, since the movie portrays aspects of urban life in Brazil. But there is also a parallel with some characteristics of the successful (and marginal) film industry from Nollywood. According to Lobato (2010: 349), Nigerian contemporary movies resemble TV soap operas, specifically the Latin American telenovelas. In that sense, it is important to mention that in Brazil telenovelas and TV series are the source of stable work for most producers and film professionals. Anna Muylaert herself directed many TV series along with her career in cinema. In The Second Mother, the broadcast aesthetics is also present due to the television background of the many professionals involved in the production of this feature film.

Those similarities, along with the warm welcome by the international audience, put the film in a status of transnational media product that is of interest for a contemporary cultural production. Using concepts presented by Berghahn and Sternberg (2010: 18), the film could be categorised as World Cinema according to the themes it addressed and to the use of Portuguese as the main language instead of English. But more than that, the film can be analysed further in relation to translocal aspects of migration and representation. The latter concept here is in accordance with the proposal made by Hall (as in Berghahn and Sternberg, 2010: 15), that the cultural empowerment of ‘the margins’ when it comes to representation resulted in a profound cultural revolution, and that the cinema has been an essential media for it.

Coming from Brazil, The Second Mother could be portrayed in an international environment in conformity with what some scholars call a ‘diasporic cinema’. Berghahn and Sternberg consider that diasporic cinema “resists homogenising tendencies and focuses on issues of identity and identity politics, making the experience of minority social groups and individuals its prime concern” (2010: 22). In other words, it can be understood as a site of transformation, intersection, and problematisation of a character’s position, taking into account matters of exclusion and sense of belonging. Referring back to the movie, by turning migrant characters (Val and Jessica) into working-class heroes**, director Anna Muylaert is also engaging in the representation of displaced workers and families torn apart by economic and sociopolitical matters around the world. It could easily relate to the context in which many communities from Africa, South America, and other developing regions confront in first world environments or even in the ‘clash’ of classes in their own countries.

There is also a matter of identification through translocality. To understand this concept, we take into account the comments from Arjun Appadurai (2005 [1996]: 21–2) that suggests that today’s imagined communities are supranational rather than national. According to Appadurai, the increasingly electronic mass mediation (in which cinema is also part) links producers and audiences across national boundaries, creating a growing number of diasporic public spheres. In that sense, this public debate is not restricted to a certain locality or national context anymore.

In this way, an international audience could discuss and relate with the subject proposed by The Second Mother across the globe recognising class, gender, and migrational issues on the screen, even with the apparent ‘locality’ from the Brazilian context. The movie’s ability to portray common situations that demonstrate the inequalities and subtle discrimination may have helped to bring awareness for these problems at the same time that transnational audiences could feel represented by Val and Jessica.

Thus, The Second Mother could be seen as a contemporary exemplar of the diasporic cinema in its effort to focus on migrant experiences, generating empathy and mediating collective identification across diverse localities. It goes beyond national boundaries in being able to represent migrants and working-class heroes through the lens of a Brazilian film-maker and, by doing so, it can promote a multicultural debate from audiences spread across the first world and the developing countries.

*According to the platform IMDb, the majority of the countries in which the movie was released are from Europe.
**The term is used by director Anna Muylaert when referring to the main characters in an email interview with Women and Hollywood (Nicholson, 2015).

References

Appadurai, A. (2005 [1996]) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press.

Berghahn, D. and Sternberg, C., 2010. ‘Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe’, in: Daniela Berghahn & Claudia Sternberg (eds.), European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lobato, R., 2010. Creative industries and informal economies: Lessons from Nollywood, in: International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 13, №4. London: SAGE Publications.

Berkshire, G., 2015. Film review: ‘The Second Mother’. Variety (online). Available at <http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/film-review-the-second-mother-1201434972/> [Accessed on November 4, 2016].

Nicholson, L., 2015. ‘The Second Mother’ Director Anna Muylaert on Why It Took 20 Years to Make Her Award-Winning Drama. IndieWire (online). Available at <http://www.indiewire.com/2015/08/the-second-mother-director-anna-muylaert-on-why-it-took-20-years-to-make-her-award-winning-drama-202756/> [Accessed on November 5, 2016].

Delcolli, C., 2015. Anna Muylaert, Brazilian Director, Talks New Film And Machismo Culture. The Huffington Post (online). Available at <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/09/10/anna-muylaert_n_8118472.html> [Accessed on November 5, 2016].

Top 100 Films 2015. Film Van Daag (online). Available at <http://www.filmvandaag.nl/top100/2015?ref=97159> [Accessed on November 5, 2016].

The Second Mother — Release Info 2015. IMDb (online). Available at <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3742378/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_ql_dt_2> [Accessed on November 5, 2016].