My Mom Is a Character 3

A Brazilian comedy and the third film of a series. Dona Hermínia is a known figure. She has her own television programme, people stop her in the street, and her life is very different from the first film. But the house is the same: grown children, a grandchild, her mother, and family arguments that never end. There are two matters in this part. One is her daughter's pregnancy and the time closing on the birth; the other is the possibility of a new relationship in Hermínia's own life. From there the film proceeds as a family gathering: dinner tables, telephones, shouting, sudden reconciliations. What the narrative is interested in is not incident but character: the whole series is built on one woman's way of speaking and her temper, and the audience comes because it knows her. Paulo Gustavo plays Dona Hermínia. The character came out of his own stage show and is performed in drag; the source is his own mother. The film entered the ranks of Brazil's most-watched domestic pictures; the series drew a very large audience there. Paulo Gustavo died in 2021 at the age of forty-two; this was the last part he made with the character. Mariana Xavier, Rodrigo Pandolfo and Ingrid Guimarães are in the cast. Susana Garcia directed. Who it is for: anyone who has followed the series and is curious about popular Brazilian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who does not know the first two films; the narrative introduces nobody and most of the jokes lean on what came before.