Vagas Para Moças de Fino Trato

In Vitória, the middle-age piano teacher Gertrudes (Norma Bengell) sublets her apartment to two younger women, the unstable Lúcia (Lucélia Santos) and the nurse Madalena (Maria Zilda Bethlem). Gertrudes misses and daydreams her former love and has a motherhood relationship with Lúcia; Madalena has a promiscuous life, having one night stand with the most different men every day and her behavior is criticized by Gertreudes; and Lúcia is dreamer that manipulates Gertrudes and expects that the handyman Alfredo (Marcos Frota) becomes her prince charming. Their conflictive relationship ends when Madalena discloses their inner feelings and secrets to each other.

"Vagas Para Moças de Fino Trato" is an adaptation of a successful play of Alcione Araujo to the cinema. This intimate tale of loneliness is supported by the performances of three great Brazilian actresses, the icon Norma Bengell, Lucélia Santos and Maria Zilda Bethlem, whose characters have the most different personalities. The daily situations, some of them quite surrealistic, show the emptiness of their lives, in a dramatic but never depressed film. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Vagas Para Moças de Fino Trato" ("Vacancies for Genteel Girls")

Based in a theatre play (the script was written by the playwright himself), this film follows the lives of two different women living together, with a dysfunctional relationship. It has ups and downs, and almost every great moment has Maria Zilda Bethlem on the screen. She shines as the extrovert and and sensuous Madalena, who works as a nurse in a madhouse during the day and parties hard with numerous sexual partners at night. Her lines talking to her roomates are hilarious, and she does look beautiful and charismatic. Norma Bengell also goes well as Gertrudes, the lonely piano teacher who has emotional dependence on the two women for whom she rents the rooms. Unfortunately, Lucélia Santos's character is annoying, unconvincing (is she naive? Is she crazy? Is she depressive? What the hell is she?), and her scenes (specially when they happen together with the embarassing character of Marcos Frota) consist in the great drawback that does not allow the outcome to be better. The the film length reached 40 or 50 minutes, there happened so nice events that I fully understood why The New York Post considered director Paulo Thiago as a promising "Brazilian Almodóvar" or this very movie. However, it was not a turning point and soon the ups and dows continued. Peréio and Gorgulho' characters are nice and add to the story. The ending is also mixed, as while Gertrudes's last scenes are excellent, the way the movie finished Maria Zilda and Lucélia Santos' characters' stories was ridiculous and even sexist. To resume, I think that this movie released two years before the "Retomada" upturn of Brazilian cinema may be considered as a late pornochanchada (Brazilian subgenre of softcore comedy, very common during the 1970s and 1980s).

This drama with some sexy scenes by Maria Zilda shows how is going the new Brazilian cinema, boring and nonsense, the movie is a naive adaptation of a famous play, but didn't work, Norma Benguell is lost in the movie, Paulo Cesar Pereio is total disaster in acting, Lucelia Santos a mad character no make sense among the mess, apart Maria Zilda who plays a colorful role with hot scenes the remains is boring, poor new Brazilian cinema!!

Resume:

First watch: 2017 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 5