Anna Muylaert Research Articles

“Beyond the kitchen door”: Racialised female domestic labourer’s mobility experiences in Anna Muylaert’s The Second Mother

The successful Brazilian fictional film The Second Mother (Que horas ela volta?, 2015), directed by Anna Muylaert, illustrates that mobility is chiefly limited or stagnant for the main character, Val (Regina Case), a live-in racialised female domestic labourer who migrates from the Brazilian northeast to the southeast to work in the house of a wealthy family in São Paulo. However, the film subtly shapes Val’s mobility as a more active, unrestrained experience once her daughter arrives in town ten years later. My goal is to understand the fundamental factors influencing Val’s range of motions. Building upon on the cultural geography notion of mobility as a socially produced movement of time and space, I look at how control over Val’s ability to move derives from the embodiment of practices of power built on derogatory discourses around the ideas of the doméstica (“maid”) and the domestic spatial and interpersonal emotional relations ingrained in class, gender, and the racial dimensions of Brazil’s former colonial, plantation-based patriarchal society. On the other hand, Val begins to disembody the powerful practices that previously controlled her mobility. I argue that the spatial, social, emotional, and bodily mobility gained by Val, echoing the Brazilian period of empowerment for the working classes, reflects gains from law such as PEC das Domésticas EC 72/2013 and Lei Complementar 150/2015.

Escrever e reescrever: práticas de roteiro de Anna Muylaert em Que horas ela volta?

The screenplay for the movie Second Mother (2015) was written and rewritten for almost 20 years: “I started writing in 1996 when I had a baby in my arms, and now he is a man with a beard”, says the filmmaker Anna Muylaert in an interview to Encontros de Cinema. The process of writing the screenplay for Second Mother involved a lot of rewriting and route changes over almost 20 years, but, despite what it may seem, the filmmaker says that it is not a closed project, but a process in permanent transformation and rewritten over the years in different moments. Muylaert details this process in several interviews, among them to Encontros de Cinema (2015), to Metrópolis (2015a), and Primeiro Tratamento (2020) when she points out the four great moments of the screenplay and the transformations it had to one version to another (1994-95-96; 2004; 2009 and 2013). Based especially on these reports and the screenplay version of December 30, 2013, we undertook a study on the creation archives of the Second Mother screenplay, moved by the search path and the questions posed by Anna Muylaert, with the theoretical and methodological support of the critical theory of creative processes by Cecilia Salles (Networks of creation, 2019; Unfinished gesture, 2019) and, in addition, studies by screenwriter Jack Epps (Screenwriting is Rewriting, 2016), about the relevance of rewriting processes, and by Paul Joseph Gulino (Screenwrintig: sequence approach, 2004), about the sequence approach technique used to structure screenplays, fundamental, according to Muylaert, for the improvisation on the set, and incorporation of the environment, as she was looking.

The Coffee Set

This video essay focuses on the representation of a black and white coffee set in four sequences of Que horas ela volta (Anna Muylaert, 2015). While throughout the film the mismatched colors seem to celebrate the possibility of class mobility and interracial relations, the unexpected final rearrangement—white cups with white saucers and black cups with black saucers—alludes to the persistence of the status quo in Brazil despite the individual success of the two protagonists.

How the scripts of Latin American screenwriters Lucrecia Martel (Argentina), Anna Muylaert (Brazil) and Claudia Llosa (Peru) have made a mark on the world stage

The films of Latin American female screenwriters, Lucrecia Martel (Argentina), Anna Muylaert (Brazil) and Claudia Llosa (Peru), have achieved international prominence in recent years. In this article we create new insights into the ways in which these screenwriters have developed scripts for films that have made a mark on the world stage. To this end we will investigate how this acclaim has been enabled by their screenwriting decisions which focus on the creation of women-centred films, as well as their use of the family story as a means of exploring contemporary social and political themes, to tell universal stories that highlight the global in the local. In doing so we canvas the personal, industrial and social factors which have impacted Martel, Muylaert and Llosa’s screenwriting careers which have been instrumental in the script development of the films: La Ciénaga (The Swamp) (Martel 2001); Que Horas Ela Volta? (The Second Mother) (); and La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow) (). The research for this article is based on personal and media interviews with the writers, as well as contemporary information available only in Spanish and Portuguese, as translated from the original Spanish and Portuguese by Clarissa Miranda.

The battle for goods: Consumption in Anna Muylaert’s The Second Mother

This article discusses how Anna Muylaert’s film Que horas ela volta? [The Second Mother] represents shifts in Brazilian society tied to governmental actions that stimulated consumption as a path toward social inclusion. The article focuses on the depictions of four commodities in the film, around which symbolic battles for the right to consume, and, ultimately, to access citizen rights, take place among characters. The article shows that, by depicting the biographies of these commodities (Kopytoff 83), the film portrays a story of the social hierarchies that characterize Brazilian society, while constructing a narrative of a hopeful future of less social inequality that also recognizes some of the challenges ahead.

Deslocamento e reconfiguração de espaço no cinema brasileiro: o caso de Linha de passe e Que horas ela volta?

In the present article, I examine Daniela Thomas and Walter Salles's Linha de passe (2008) and Anna Muylaert's Que horas ela volta? (2015). I argue that these films create new representational possibilities for subjects withincontemporary Brazilian culture by breaking with the dominant model of the favela as a predominantly masculine space that is essentially "out of control." This renegotiation brings with it a valorization of the subjectivity of women who work in the city. I argue that this valorization takes place in both films through the physical displacement of those who traditionally do not enjoy subject status and yet dare to enter territories previously denied to them.

Cultura cinematográfica e identidades queer no Brasil contemporâneo

Resumo Este artigo procura analisar a interação entre a cultura cinematográfica brasileira, as comunidades LGBTQIA+ e a sociedade em geral no começo do século XXI, uma interação (e produção cinematográfica) que aumentou exponencialmente durante o período destacado, em grande parte como resultado do alcance aos meios de produção de grupos historicamente segregados, juntamente com maior acesso ao financiamento de filmes. Após contextualizar a produção de filmes queer e a exibição dos mesmos no século 21 no Brasil, o artigo analisará os seguintes filmes lançados nos últimos seis anos: Praia do Futuro (Karim Ainouz, 2014), Mãe só há uma (Anna Muylaert, 2016) e Bixa Travesty (Kiko Goifman e Claudia Priscilla, 2018).

O conceito do ócio vicário no filme “Que Horas Ela Volta?”: revisitando Thorstein Veblen em uma perspectiva dos fenômenos socioeconômicos

Resumo O objeto teórico deste estudo é a construção teórica do ócio vicário de Veblen (1989), tendo conceitos veblenianos como fatores precedentes. Já o objeto empírico deste estudo é o filme brasileiro Que Horas Ela Volta? da roteirista e diretora brasileira Anna Muylaert (QUE HORAS, 2015), que foi premiado no Sundance Film Festival e no Film Festival Internacional de Berlim, ambos de 2015. Para confluir com a proposta metodológica interdisciplinar de Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), esse filme é analisado em uma perspectiva historicista defendida por Kornis (1992). Utilizando as categorias “divisão de classe e suas funções”, “a mulher e a propriedade”, “riqueza e status”, “o trabalho”, “a cerimônia signo de honra”, “ócio conspícuo e distinção social”, “hereditariedade e sangue nobre”, “ócio vicário” e “contexto sócio-histórico-cultural brasileiro”, tem-se como resultado que os conceitos vebleniamos apresentam uma aderência à atual divisão de classes que poderia ser mais utilizada para compreender os fenômenos contemporâneos brasileiros. A questão do ócio vicário e do trabalho doméstico constitui tema relevante econômica e socialmente e teve um debate social recente, como exposto na discussão sobre a regulação da atividade pelo Estado. Como ponto central do trabalho vebleniano, as transformações do status quo da forma de consumo permeia o conceito de consumo conspícuo para a distinção de status e honra das classes econômicas e sociais brasileiras.

CINEMA, IDEOLOGIA E CONSUMO: UMA REFLEXÃO SOBRE O FILME QUE HORAS ELA VOLTA

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo compreender de que forma o cinema pode funcionar como instrumento ideológico sob o ângulo dos Estudos Culturais. Os aportes teóricos utilizados perpassam conceitos de hegemonia e ideologia trabalhados por Ana Carolina Escosteguy (2001) e Stuart Hall (1997); os fundamentos dos Estudos Culturais por meio de Jesús Martín-Barbero e Germán Rey (2004); o debate sobre a cultura da mídia levantado por Douglas Kellner (2001); e as contribuições sobre o processo de identificação que ocorre no cinema a partir de Béla Baláz (1945) e sobre a construção da diegese fílmica caracterizada por Étienne Souriau (1953), entre outros. Discutimos ainda, a partir de Néstor García Canclini (2008; 2012), as dinâmicas de comunicação e consumo apresentadas no filme Que horas ela volta? (Anna Muylaert, 2015), buscando evidenciar como se configura o papel do cinema frente às lutas ideológicas e mediante um universo de representações sociais oriundas do ato de consumir.

Intimacy at work: servant and employer relations in Que horas ela volta? (The second mother)

ABSTRACTThis chapter examines servant/employer relationships in Anna Muylaert’s film Que horas ela volta? (The Second Mother, 2015). Written in the first person by someone who locates herself as a white, middle-class Brazilian from humble origins who has lived abroad for nearly 30 years, the chapter focuses on the sense of discomfort caused on her by the film and by Brazilian middle-class reliance on domestic servants, whilst at the same time analysing the role played by intimacy and servitude in the film. In dialogue with Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s definition(s) of “cordialidade” (and with later discussions of it), the chapter examines what “cordialidade” can mean in the context of employers/domestic servants relationships in contemporary Brazil.

Cordiality and intimacy in contemporary Brazilian culture: introduction

ABSTRACTThis article serves as an introduction to a special issue on intimacy and cordiality in contemporary Brazilian cultural production. It traces these purported “national traits” back to their exploration in Gilberto Freyre’s renowned Casa-grande & senzala (1933) and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s Raízes do Brasil (1936). While Freyre emphasises the formative influence of the close ties between Afro-Brazilian wet-nurses and landowning families in the colonial era, Holanda’s schematisation of the “cordial man” focuses on the sinister consequences of the Brazilian drive towards intimacy. The articles enclosed are informed by Holanda’s suggestion that the country’s colonial heritage and patriarchal culture has complicated the institution of a clear distinction between the private (familial) and public realms. The recent wave of Brazilian cinema and TV series that focuses on the figure of the maid evocatively foregrounds the continuing primacy of intimate relationships in Brazil, including in films by Anna Muylaert and Kleber Mendonça Filho, which are analysed in this issue. The link between cordiality and cruelty is also explored to provide a context for articles that reflect on the frailties of Brazilian state apparatuses, which have led to social breakdown, and even to the use of coercion or torture.

“Da porta da cozinha pra lá”: gênero e mudança social no filme Que horas ela volta?

O filme Que horas ela volta? (2015), de Anna Muylaert, narra a perturbação do cotidiano de uma família da elite paulistana depois da chegada da filha de sua empregada doméstica. Este artigo analisa os modos como o filme narra vivências íntimas, pessoais e emocionais de homens e mulheres no Brasil hoje, marcadas pelas mudanças sociais dos últimos dez anos. O artigo retoma estudos da antropologia sobre o trabalho doméstico e alguns aspectos históricos da constituição da família brasileira. No filme, a linguagem melodramática e a sugestão de um final feliz trazem um olhar benevolente para as transformações recentes do país. As conclusões sugerem que o empoderamento da mulher brasileira, celebrado pelo filme, precisa ser visto com cautela, já que, apesar da redução dos abismos econômicos no país, ainda permanecem entre nós intensas desigualdades sociais.

Retrato invulgar do cotidiano e subversão de gêneros no cinema de Anna Muylaert

Ao analisar os longas-metragens Durval discos (2002) e É proibido fumar (2009), de Anna Muylaert, este artigo busca compreender de que modo os dois filmes dinamizam o urbano e sua representação em uma linguagem de forte alcance subversivo, na medida em que a experiência fílmica desconstrói as noções preestabelecidas de composição cênica. Neles, a narrativa se vislumbra na intervenção de um “retrato” do comum, contudo, inserida em denúncia, característica quase intrínseca na produção do cinema brasileiro nas últimas décadas. Ao fazê-lo, os filmes instituem-se como exemplos de narratividade contemporânea do cotidiano, cujo apelo estético de espontaneidade referenda certo experimentalismo por meio da tensão rítmica de uma montagem calcada na fugacidade, além da ligação com o ritmo próximo à comédia – como gênero demarcado – e aos percalços dos erros e acertos da vida diária.