Clara, a lonely nurse from the outskirts of São Paulo, is hired to be a nanny for the unborn child of the mysterious and wealthy, Ana. They develop a close bond as they prepare for the baby. Yet, once Ana gives birth, they must face a frightful surprise. Suddenly, their tasks become much more complicated...
Class, desire, motherhood, responsibility to society — all these themes are worked in, to varying degrees. Yet balancing the film’s two halves is less successful, and certain shifts between humor and dead-seriousness don’t quite work.
Swerving from predictable to confounding, dreamy to demented, artful to awkward, this genre-twisting hybrid from Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra links art house and slaughterhouse with unexpected success.
For a first half so rich in plot, subtext and genres, it feels somehow frustrating to see Good Manners’s potential stall a little as the feature enters its second part.
There’s nothing especially wrong with the arty horror movie that Good Manners becomes, mind you, and the metamorphosis (unexpected, for those who haven’t read a review or seen the poster image, anyway) offers pleasures of its own.
The first hour is the strongest, graced as it is by Estiano's nuanced performance as a conventional-seeming young woman who gradually and very sympathetically reveals her inner self after welcoming Clara into her life.
This is a different kind of monster movie, no doubt. It’s beautiful and magical, and as aware of the real world as it is of classic Hollywood. Good Manners is a haunting tale of love — and the burdens that come with it.
Pulling off an ambitious mash-up of genres like Good Manners is no easy feat — that Dutra and Rojas pull it off so successfully suggests we’ll be hearing a lot more from them down the road.
Genre defying and genuinely unexpected, this intriguing urban fairytale takes the mythology of the werewolf story and uses it as a prism through which to view contemporary Brazilian society. Thematically rich, it weaves together fantasy horror elements with commentaries on class, race, sexuality and motherhood.
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Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
Variety by Jay Weissberg
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
The Film Stage by Leonardo Goi
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
The Hollywood Reporter by Neil Young
Los Angeles Times by Noel Murray
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
Village Voice by Serena Donadoni
Screen International by Wendy Ide