A summer house, with a swimming pool. Forty-year-old Paula probably had rose-tinted expectations of the holidays she would spend there. But in A felicidade das coisas, she actually spends her summer, heavily pregnant, in a cramped house that is a complete mess. Without her husband but with her mother, her standoffish pre-teen son and daughter. The house is close to a hazardous river, a not particularly charming beach and an expensive club. The vaunted swimming pool has been dumped on its side in the garden. There’s no money to have it installed – none whatsoever. Nevertheless, Paula becomes determined to install the pool, as if this will suddenly make everyone happy and her frustrations disappear.
Weariness gradually creeps across actress Patricia Saravy’s face. In this well-acted personal drama, debut director Thais Fujinaga also tells a bigger story: about motherhood and a sense of responsibility, and about Brazil, where, according to her, who you are is determined by what you have.
Trailer
This content is available after accepting the marketing cookies.
Interview
This content is available after accepting the marketing cookies.
Film details
- Country of production
- Brazil
- Year
- 2021
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2021
- Length
- 87"
- Medium/Format
- DCP
You may also like this
-
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror
Kier-La Janisse helps us understand our current cultural malaise through this essay on an enigmatic aspect of horror cinema.
-
Thomas der Hochspringer
Distinctively styled film about a lonely young athlete with an all-controlling mother. An exceptional German debut.
-
The Story of Southern Islet
In a Malaysian village, a fishmonger suffers from a mysterious illness. Is it black magic? Did he upset a god?