Review: Alice’s House

Alice’s House raises the question: Can a film thrive on too much detail?

Alice’s House
Photo: FiGa Films

Can a film thrive on too much detail? In the bathroom of Alice’s house, urine accumulates on the toilet seat. Alice (Carla Ribas) wipes it away before reprimanding her three sons for their masculine indiscretions. In the bedroom and living room, these male hotties seem to be always prepping for an amateur performance of Three Dancing Slaves, using their brotherly camaraderie as a jumping-off point to broach more serious issues about life—which is to say, fucking. Writer-director Chico Teixeira started out in documentaries but the sense of realism he brings to his first feature-length fiction is fussy and unilluminative of character when it should be spontaneous. It’s also not without its noxious implications. Underlining much of the film is a trite inspection of male behavior: Two different scenes feature men—Alice’s husband, Lindomar (Zécarlos Machado), and her lover, Nilson (Luciano Quirino)—tending to their extramarital honeys while being distracted by another woman’s breasts and ass. Incident also incredulously flies off the screen, from the young neighbor girl, Thaïs (Mariana Leighton), who asks an oblivious Alice for advice on how to steal Lindomar from her to the manner in which Alice flaunts the necklace Nilson gave her in front of a disinterested Lindomar. There is also Nilson’s wife, Carmen (Renata Zhaneta), who appears to have an appointment every day at Alice’s beauty shop, coincidentally taking her rage over her husband’s adultery out on the money-mongering Alice. It seems only natural, then, that poor Dona Jacira (Berta Zemel), Alice’s mother, should be going blind: From the house’s laundry room and balcony the old woman has an all-access pass into Lindomar’s jeans, whose pockets conveniently spill evidence of his extramarital affairs, and a birds-eye view of one grandson, Lucas (Vinicius Zinn), receiving money from a trick. By the time a beauty shop patron refers to Alice’s life as a soap opera, you can only shake your head in agreement.

Score: 
 Cast: Carla Ribas, Berta Zemel, Vinicius Zinn, Ricardo Vilaça, Felipe Massuia, Zécarlos Machado, Renata Zhaneta, Luciano Quirino, Mariana Leighton  Director: Chico Teixeira  Screenwriter: Chico Teixeira  Distributor: FiGa Films  Running Time: 90 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2007  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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