Good Manners

Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra met in college and bonded over, among other things, their love of diverse genres of cinema. Good Manners, their second feature together after Hard Labor (2011), is a terrifying melodrama with science fiction, political and musical elements, its concept originating in a dream Marco had of two women living in an isolated house, breeding a phantom baby. A loose version of a werewolf myth, the film is rife with the sensibility of Tourneur, set within an extraordinary futuristic city and the scenery of São Paolo. Ana is an upper-class Latin American woman, pregnant, alone and ostracized by her family, and Clara is a nurse, hired by Ana for around-the-clock medical assistance. Ana is white, Clara is Black. Ana lives in the center, Clara in the periphery. As the film progresses, the dualities between these women multiply, doors open and tensions fester. The full moon kickstarts dramatic transformations that subvert established societal orders. Good Manners, full of allegories about the nature of gender, is a terrifying urban fable, with precise political and social critiques.