Three Summers

Three Summers (or Três Verões) is a film that deals with the corruption and class-based deprivation that seems to be rife in Brazil these days. The film, directed by Sandra Kogut, positions itself in the luxury mansion and resort style grounds of a filthy rich family and takes place over three summers (clearly). The neat trick is that it removes the family from the film in short order and leaves us with the staff - cooks, grounds-keeper, maids, dogsbodies and the head caretaker, Madá, played with near-annoying verve by Regina Casé. 

Chasing up unpaid wages takes up most of their time but Madá sets about coming up with ways to make the mansion pay off. She runs boat tours of the bay (pointing out all the houses of crims - noting that if they punters can see someone at the house, they're most likely 'foreigners or football players'). The staff ransack the family clothes and heirlooms for a garage sale. The house is offered in a kind of Air BnB set-up and is even somehow rented out as a set for some cheesy looking info-tainment TV show.

The characters keep the interest (there's a nice turn by the patriarch of the family who joins Madá in her exploits) and the pace holds firm without many ebbs. It's no world beater but for a sly, caustic stab at the Brazilian establishment, Three Summers is a pretty good way to spend some film time.

Three Summers is showing at the Luna in Perth.

See also:

Walter Salles' Central Station (1998) is another fine Brazilian film, and Two Days, One Night (2014), directed by the Dardenne Brothers, deals with similar themes.