A Casa de Alice (2007)

English title: Alice's House.

A family and its many conflicts. The father is a taxi driver and has an affair with an adolescent girl, the mother works at a beauty parlor and becomes interested in a client's husband who is an old flame of hers, the oldest son is a prostitute, the middle son is a thief, the grandmother does all the house work.

Despite a certain mise-en-scene competence which is much welcome, especially in a Brazilian movie, this is an uninspired look at the lower middle class in Brazil; furthermore, the film is suffused with an arrogant attitude which is typical of someone who has little or no knowledge of real people in this social class. Real people are nothing like they showed in this movie. And at least one plot point suggests they must have been on acid while writing it: rest homes for the elderly --- even modest ones -- charge non-negligible fees and therefore would not be an option for a family like the one depicted in the film. Apart from showing how petty and despicable these people with little money are, the film goes pretty much nowhere and ends before anything really interesting happens.

Rating: 29