Work, class and family in Brazil: Anna Muylaert's surprise, THE SECOND MOTHER

The movie that, for most American arthouse audiences, will quickly come to mind when they watch THE SECOND MOTHER, a new Brazilian film from Anna Muylaert, will probably be Sebastián Silva's Chilean mini-masterpiece, The Maid. Both are first-rate explorations of family, class and work in today's South America, as they examine character, self-image and one's ability to change and grow. And both are spectacularly smart, witty, politically progressive and genuinely humane entertainments.

Ms Muylaert, shown at right, is aware of and interested in many of the same things as is Señor Silva. Their styles and approaches differ, as does the character of each of their leading roles: a well-into-middle-age woman who has effectively given away her life to that of another family and class. Oh, she is part of that family, to be sure -- but she is a very noticeable and large step below it. In The Maid, she begins as a harridan who slowly softens into her humanity; in The Second Mother, she is a font of affection and help who must harden and grow until she comes to understand and appreciate her very real worth.

Both roles are given all you could ask by their respective actors. In The Second Mother, as portrayed by Regina Casé (shown above and below), the maid Val is a wonder of seemingly limitless affection and concern, especially for the boy, Fabinho (shown above as a young child and below as a teen played with appropriate raw youth and uncertainty by Michel Joelsas). Val has been with this family long enough to guide Fabinho toward manhood, and he is more her child than is even her own daughter, Jessica, whom she had to abandon to other relatives in order to earn enough money for Jessica's support down the years.

When that daughter (a very interesting, subdued and smart performance by Camila Márdila, below, center, at bottom, and on poster, top) suddenly arrives to see her mom for the first time in a decade, everyone's life is thrown into disarray. The great strength of Muylaert's movie is that all this happens not quite as expected and with a different set of consequences from what our expectations hold -- even after we've been disabused of some of our earlier notions. The writer/director is not afraid to toss in a couple of events that might strain credulity -- and then make these both funny and utterly, if oddly, believable.

The family, too, is not shown to be impossibly nasty or as horrible users. Yes, they're "entitled," all right, but they have not lost (not even the rather bitchy mother, played by Karine Teles, below, right) the ability to completely distinguish right from wrong.

How change happens -- to all of these folk, including the sad, de-balled dad of the family -- manages to be funny, moving, and above all real. Muylaert takes a gimlet-eyed look at class divisions, entitlement, and the growing expectations of a coming-into-being middle class, while understanding how difficult this kind of change can really be, and how it first must come from within the individual in order to become anything like a "movement."

The movie leaves you, as it does its characters, in the middle of all this change. But it also leaves you somehow hopeful, even against what appear to be pretty heavy odds. The Second Mother -- from Oscilloscope, in Portuguese with English subtitles, and running 112 minutes -- opens this Friday, August 28, in Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal) and New York City (at the Angelika Film Center and The Paris Theatre) and from there over the weeks to come in another 35 cities/theaters -- including, on September 25, our own Living Room Theater in Boca Raton. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates.

Nicolas Cuche's ANYTHING FOR ALICE: a cute French rom-com with politics and philosophy

If you're looking for something different in rom-coms (and aren't we all, just about all the time), you could do a lot worse that the new one from Rialto Pictures (via the company's more mainstream division), ANYTHING FOR ALICE (Prêt à tout is its original title). Last year Rialto gave us another winning rom-com that offered something a bit different, The Stroller Strategy, and this new one proves a fine follow-up, as it details the budding romance between two college students, a dorky but charming young man and the politically exuberant, beautiful young woman for whom he falls.

As directed by Nicolas Cuche (shown at right) and written by Laurent Turner (The Prey), the latter with some help from Sabrina Amara and Eric Jehelmann, Anything for Alice, like The Stroller Strategy before it, revolves around, among other things, the plight of a single mother, although in this case, our heroine becomes that mother before she meets the man who is so interested in her. What distinguishes this little rom-com, aside from its sprightly nature and good performances, is its interest in the workplace, class distinctions, and the uses of money. The film is particularly funny regarding knee-jerk values and their representation by us humans on the left and the right.

The premise of the film (way over the top) works surprisingly well, too, so far as the fantasy rom-com formula is concerned: that a fellow suddenly come into a lot of money would purchase an entire factory so that his lady love, who works there, might continue to have a job. The would-be couple in question -- the titular Alice and the suddenly wealthy Max -- are played by Max Boublil (above, left) and Aïssa Maïga (above, right), both astute charmers who know their way around the rom-coms tropes.

What this factory produces is a drink called Bang -- a kind of French version of our own Tang, a drink evidently much beloved by Charles De Gaulle. A lot of fun is had about this substance and its manufacture, and you do not have to be French to appreciate it. The movie is also full of surprising and very funny moments -- such as the destruction of a Rolex watch, together with the reason for doing this -- that keep the pace quickening and the laughs coming fast. Once our hero owns the factory, working conditions do indeed change, in ways both good and not so.

Overall, Anything for Alice is a funny and original fantasy of what might happen if you or I, or maybe many of those we know, found ourselves the recipient of just tons of money. In its way, the movie is a kind of twist on the 1940s Hollywood comedy Brewster's Millions, but with all the spending done for a different reason. (In our current "downer" times, Brewster's is a movie ripe for another remake, as the first one pretty much sucked. I wonder why this hasn't yet happened?)

In the supporting cast are a number of fine thespians, but special note must be made of the actress who plays Max's mom, the delightful Chantal Lauby (shown two photos up). Also very good are Max's two best pals (played by Redouanne Harjane, above, left, and Steve Tran, above, right), and a young and promising newcomer,  Idriss Roberson (at right, three photos above), who plays Alice's son, a boy with a bad case of ochlophobia.

You can view Anything for Alice right now, in West Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal. Elsewhere? I certainly hope so, though I find no other cities scheduled as yet. But maybe the movie will surface soon on DVD and/or digital streaming. If you're a fan of rom-coms-with-smarts, it's very much worth seeing.

PIANOMANIA, from Lilian Franck & Robert Cibis, tracks a great piano tuner at work

How invigorating it is to be able to observe someone at work, handling a complicated job brilliantly, working under heavy pressure and making vital decisions that will change everything. Just such an experience is to be found in PIANOMANIA -- the award-winning 2009 documentary by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis that was evidently quite the smash in Europe and Britain and is finally getting its theatrical release, interestingly enough opening up in New York and Los Angeles after playing most of the rest of the country earlier in the year.

Though there are famous pianists galore in Pianomania -- Alfred Brendel, Lang Lang and Pierre-Laurent Aimard, to name just  three -- filmmakers Franck, shown at right, and Cibis (below, left) very smartly concentrate their entire efforts around the Vienna-based chief technician and Master Tuner for Steinway & Sons, Stephan Knüpfer, who seems to have dedicated his career (and practically his whole life) to matching the right piano with the right pianist. It ain't easy.

I don't think you need to be a pianist to appreciate all that goes on here, but it might help. TrustMovies himself played the piano, rather badly, in his younger days, but he found it occasionally tricky, just keeping up with all that was going on in the film. The specificity involved in Knüpfer's work astounds: At one point a particular key sounds slightly sharp -- but only when it played in a third with two other keys! And our heroic Master Tuner, shown below, must right the situation. What an ear this fellow has! (Next time Avery Fisher Hall gets an acoustic redo, the folk at Lincoln Center really should consider hiring Knüpfer.)

We learn that most often pianists search for a concert grand, the sound from which is powerful enough to fill a huge concert hall but is also sonorous -- "It has colors," as our tuner and certain of the pianists put it. They all, it seems, want different things, sometimes from the same piano. And damned if Knüpfer doesn't come through in the crunch and give it to them.

At one point the tuner/technician has a conversation about the neuroses among musicians -- including himself. We see bits and pieces of these, as various performers come in and out of view. That's Lang Lang above, right (who likes to rehearse right up until the time that the audience is entering the hall), and Brendel, below, but neither seem to be the type who would have a tuner at his wits' end.

Aimar, however, from what we witness here, just might be. Though the two men appear to understand and appreciate each other, the pianist (shown below) seems such a stickler for, well, literally everything, that we fear our hero may finally not be able to come through. In the film's last half hour, we observe all the deatiled work that goes into, not just a concert but a recording session with Aimar.

The funniest and most surprising of the pianists is the duo known as Igudesman & Joo, made up of Aleksey Ifudesman and Richard Hyung-Ki Joo.  When Mr Joo (shown below) sits down at the keyboard (or underneath it) and literally bangs out a number of amazing things, older folk will be put in mind of Victor Borge, but without any of that late comedian/pianist's insufferable self-regard and pomposity. Joo is a delight, and Pianomania -- though I think it will appeal most to those who understand and appreciate concert hall acoustics (or who follow and perhaps dote upon concert pianists) -- should prove equally entertaining for the intelligent arthouse crowd who don't mind engaging with a subject this abstruse.

From First Run Features, the documentary opens for a one-week run in New York (at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal) this Friday, November 4. There will weekend-only screenings November 5 and 6 at Laemmle's Encino Town Center 5 and Claremont 5. You can view all past and forthcoming playdates by clicking here.