[Director Chico] Texeira's ordinary characters have a quiet genuineness and clarity that is rare anywhere in movies these days.
Alice's House (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:30
Fresh:27
Rotten:3
Average Rating:6.8/10
Consensus: Chico Teixeira's steady hand and unblinking, sympathetic eye -- along with Carla Ribas' breathtaking performance -- make this portrait of working-class Brazilian life extraordinary.
Runtime: 1 hr 33 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Brazilian documentary filmmaker Chico Teixeira brings a refreshingly natural touch to ALICE'S HOUSE, a working class drama about personal and family betrayal. Forty-ish manicurist Alice (Carla... Brazilian documentary filmmaker Chico Teixeira brings a refreshingly natural touch to ALICE'S HOUSE, a working class drama about personal and family betrayal. Forty-ish manicurist Alice (Carla Ribas) works long hours at the beauty parlor, only to return to a cramped Sao Paulo apartment she inhabits with her brutish husband Lindomar (Zecarlos Machado), three disrespectful sons, and her ailing mother. Struggling daily against such densely packed machismo, Alice is blind to the secrets simmering beneath her family's mundane existence. This includes her eldest son turning tricks with older men and her husband's affairs with teenage girls. Alice is soon drawn into her own web of infidelity by the reappearance of an old high school flame. As truths finally boil to the surface Alice must choose between a painful new reality and her desperate romantic hopes. Unlike the urban violence of recent Brazilian successes (CITY OF GOD, BUS 174), ALICE'S HOUSE is a quietly moving, warts-and-all observation of love, sex, and deception. Director Teixeira employs an intimate, true-to-life style that puts the film's focus squarely on the mercurial emotions and loyalties of its characters. Lauded throughout Latin America, ALICE'S HOUSE reveals how pride isolates a family from itself, and that only truth can lead you back on the road to healing. [More]
Starring: Carla Ribas, Vinicius Zinn, Ricardo Vilaça, Felipe Massuia
Starring: Carla Ribas, Vinicius Zinn, Ricardo Vilaça, Felipe Massuia, Berta Zemel, Zécarlos Machado, Luciano Quirino
Director: Chico Teixeira
Director: Chico Teixeira
Screenwriter: Chico Teixeira, Julio Pessoa, Sabina Anzuategui, Marcelo Gomes
Producer: Patrick Leblanc
Studio: Vitagraph Films
Reviews for Alice's House
Builds a quiet portrait of a family step-by-step imploding. Such a sympathetic depiction of working-class families are rarely seen on screen from any country.
First-time director Chico Teixeira, an accomplished maker of documentaries in Brazil, brings a similar nonfiction feel to this melodramatic milieu, which is kick-started when Alice contemplates having an affair of her own with a former sweetheart.
Nothing much happens in Alice's House, and a turning point in the plot is terribly contrived, but as sociology and maybe even a pilot for a soap serial, the movie is worth a look.
mia ap' aytes tis tainies poy den se noiazei an emfanistei enas pistolas apo to dipla gyrisma na toys gazosei oloys, arkei na teleiosei. Kai telika, kapos etsi ginetai.
Even though it sounds awfully depressing, there's something moving about watching people go at their lives with everything they have -- or don't have.
Very well-acted, especially by (Carla) Ribas, this is a tense drama of friendship, family and deceit that explores a wide spectrum of raw emotions.
[The] restrained, elliptical style, focused on details rather than confrontations, and the nuanced performances make this house a home.
Like a Brazilian telenovela unfolding in real time, the film fans its cards out slowly until we can see for ourselves the deck is stacked.
Teixeira brings his camera into her home and quietly records the details of her daily life. The result is a carefully observed film about one woman's growing dissatisfaction.
Although the characters are steeped in the culture of telenovelas and voodoo superstition, Alice's House is a subtly flavorful slice of life rather than a steamy potboiler.
The capable cast, director’s documentarian past and ambient soundtrack heighten the film’s real-life sensibility, perfectly capturing the working-class life of a São Paulo family.
In her first leading role, Carla Ribas joins the fast-growing ranks of middle-aged Latina actresses whose performances resonate with a beguiling mixture of emotional complexity and sexual maturity.
In a remarkably assured, no-frills feature debut, Brazilian documentarian Chico Teixeira draws a vivid portrait of marital and familial dysfunction.
The juiciest bits happen off camera, yet their consequences are riveting, thanks in no small measure to sympathetic performances by Carla Ribas and Berta Zemel.
The gritty location shooting, the absence of a soundtrack and the casting of non-professionals in key roles help capture an all-important sense of place with almost documentary precision.
Writer-director Chico Teixeira, who started out making documentaries, watches from afar as his middle-class characters go about their day-in, day-out activities, most of which revolve around sex.
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