Durval Discos

Durval is forty, lives with his mother in Sao Paulo and runs a record shop in the front room of the house. The trouble is that nobody buys records any more; it is the nineties and the shop has been losing money for years. His mother hires a new cleaner. On her first day the woman brings a child with her and never comes back. Mother and son keep the girl, and the situation quickly becomes abduction. The film starts as comedy and darkens as it goes; nobody acts from malice, everyone acts out of their own loneliness, and the result is still a crime. The real subject is that Durval has never managed to leave his mother. Anna Muylaert wrote and directed, her first feature. Thirteen years later she would be known internationally for The Second Mother, and the concerns are the same here: class, domestic labour and who sits where. The shop is the film's own time capsule: the shelves, the sleeves and the records playing show the end of an era directly. Who it is for: anyone who likes Brazilian cinema and family stories that slide into black comedy. Who it is not for: anyone expecting comfortable comedy. The tone hardens in the middle, the child's situation is uncomfortable, and the ending closes abruptly.