Alice’s House

In this feature début by documentary maker Teixeira, a drama unfolds that matches up to his earlier work in terms of intensity and social themes. Alice, a Brazilian nail stylist, spends her days in a simple beauty salon, where gossip with an erotic undertone forms the backdrop to the quasi-intimate exchange of personal details with clients and colleagues. Her husband earns a modest income elsewhere in the city with his taxi. At home, a grandmother eternally doing the washing and cooking orders the chaotic household with two working parents and three large, rival sons. In other words: an average family with an average life in an average Brazilian town.
Then the first worrying signs appear of the various ‘second lives’ that are at work outside. When Alice catches her husband having affairs with girls, including the girl next door she still likes so much, she also allows herself to be taken in by the charms of an old love. Of course it leads to nothing but emptiness.
Teixeira does not judge, but allows the often suppressed tensions to build in calm and yet razor-sharp scenes filled with natural acting. The camera places the characters with subtle details in the broader context of Brazilian society, in which countless parallel stories take place.

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