Alice’s House tells the story of a midde class family living in Sao Paulo. Alice (Carla Ribas), the matriarch of the family, is an unhappy wife and mother who works as a manicurist. She is married to Lindomar (Zé Carlos Machado), with whom has a decaying relationship and they have three children, all of them male and teenagers and if that wasn’t difficult enough there is a sixth member: Alice’s mother Dona Jacira (Berta Zemel). While the apartment is filled with physical beings it is also filled with secrets.
In the first scene, a rat is found living in the family’s apartment. Jacinda immediately tries to combat its presence with poison. Unlike the French comedy “Sitcom” (François Ozon – 1998) and perhaps the pesky fellow in Dominick Moll‘s Lemming (2004), the presence of the rat isn’t going to become the main source for the family’s problems. Actually, it works in an opposite way: it is just an indicator of what the apartment can hide. The apartment turns out to be a character of the movie: it hides family’s secrets in drawers, wallets and under mattresses. Jacinda, the only character that is in part aware of all the things that occur inside the family’s crib, puts a lot of effort into trying to keep things stable. Ironically, she is the one that starts to develop blindness.
Chico Teixeira began his
career in the cinema with the documentary “Favelas”(1989),
he followed that up with “Velhice” (“Oldness” – 1991), a portrait of the
habitants of a home for old people. “Criaturas que nasciam em segredo”
(the portuguese for “creatures born in secret” – 1995) won 21 awards in
Brazil, including Best Movie and Best Director in the 23th Festival of
Gramado, Sound and Editing in the 28th Festival of Brasilia and three
international, including the Iberian-American award in the Movie
Festival of Huesca (Spain). In 2001, Teixeira released “Carrego
comigo” (“Carry with me” – 2001) with much critical praise from the public and
critics alike. “Alice’s House” (2007) is his first fictional movie.
Chico creates an atmosphere where the details, maybe seen with no importance by the family, are the conflict. Before the discussion of values or society, “Alice’s House” takes its public to a very personal, slow and quiet journey of people who want to change but aren’t ready to face consequences. With a very prominent script, the movie shows the talent of its cast especially in the quiet moments, amazingly placed by Teixeira. It wouldn’t be that surprising that, in a story of people with a lot of secrets, the quiet moments are key.
I had the chance to speak to Chico before he left for the United States to promote the release of the Alice’s House which was released January 25th in NYC and L.A. by Vitagraph Films and Figa Films.
Chico Teixeira
Bruno Bragança: You used to be a documentary filmmaker and, suddenly,
this change to the cinema of fiction has happen and you are garnering the accolades in festivals and international circuits. Carla’s acting, thanks to
her talent and your direction, is being widely appreciated. How has this change been to you?
Chico Teixeira: This change from the documentary
to the fiction has been really difficult. At the beginning, I wanted to produce
other documentary. I had just finished shooting a movie about identical twins
and then I began to do some research about blindness, which would be the theme
of the next one. At some point, I found out that it wasn’t exactly what I
wanted to do, I wanted to make up a story, a whole new situation. And the
coolest part of the fiction is the possibility of extravagation
of the anxieties, of the rhetoric questions, the inquietudes. So, when it feels
the urge of healing them, the fiction is going to work like an acupunturist, going
straight to the source of the problem and starting the treatment. This happens
too in the documentary but in a much smaller scale.
And deep inside, I found out that
dealing with actors, it might sound ridiculous but it isn’t, is not that
different than interviewing for documentaries. When you shot a documentary, you
understand what the person being interviewed is going through, like you’re doing
with me doing right now, you know how I am, you can feel by the way that I
speak. So it’s possible to notice if the person is nervous or anxious. I used
to pay a lot of attention to that during the interviews for my documentaries.
Before dealing with actors, this has tough me how to deal with people in
general. And by the end, I discovered that actors aren’t anything but sensitive
people, completely naked from their clothes and their feelings.
So this change has been
difficult, like any other change. It’s as difficult as moving to a new house,
state or job but I believe that nothing is impossible and to change sometimes
is really healthy.
In terms of language and production, what is the biggest difference
between filming a fiction and filming a documentary?
I noticed that, in the fiction,
in terms of language, it’s possible to say much more using only the body. This
allows the filmmaker to express much more things without having to fall back upon the words. The
documentary, instead, at least the ones that I produced, is based only in the
words. Others things that can pass on feelings without the use of words are the
silence, small gestures, the details, which, by the way, I find much more
interesting.
The cast of the movie is
composed almost entirely by newcomers in the film industry – like Carla Ribas.
How did you do the casting for the movie?
The casting was really
complicated; it took me almost seven months to get to final cast. Some people
were cast quickly, some weren’t. For example, to finally cast Carla as Alice,
I spent six months searching the ideal actress. I interviewed more than a
thousand actors for the movie, with the help of Fatima Toledo (responsible for
the casting and coaching the actors). I didn’t want famous actors, from the
soap-operas and television, I wanted unknowns because I felt the need of an
unmade image with the public so people can go see the movie with an undeveloped
idea of the characters, this was my main goal. (…) All the actors were great; we didn’t have any
sort of relationship problem during the shooting.
Tell me about the scenes. I
would risk saying the most intense scene was the one with the fight between
Alice and her kids. Was it the most difficult to shot?
This scene was extremely
difficult to film to me, to the director of photography, to everyone. The
actors were all really nervous because we had rehearsed and the fight had been
real (…). I didn’t want the fight to be choreography so everything that we did
was real. We had rehearsed a lot. In the day of the shooting, no one was talking;
everyone was really quiet and scared – just like me. We did the marking on the
set, the cast did their exercises. But everyone was really concentrated and professional.
So we shot once and when we finished, the boys were all crying and begging me
not to repeat the scene. Actually, the shot was perfect but I couldn’t stay
only with that one. We repeated and Carla got hurt when she hit the furniture
of the house and the boys wouldn’t stop crying. Another one wasn’t really
necessary so we stopped. (…) It was a beautiful experience; it carries a lot of
dedication and emotion of everyone. (…) It seemed like they needed a father in
that moment and, as director, they come to me as if I was their dad. It’s a
very good feeling.
Alice’s House talks about universal themes, like loneliness, deeply
immersed in the quotidian of Sao Paulo. The movie has been shown in several countries around world. How has
been your impression of the international reception of the story of this little
fragment of Brazil
In general, people liked the
movie, which surprises me a lot because it isn’t easy to watch. It’s really
emotional and involves our own bruises, like lockers that
we don’t want to open. So it surprises me and the most interesting part is that
each country people like it in a different way. In Berlin,
for example, when the movie premiered in the Festival (of Berlin),
I saw a very curious public. They were wonderful. It was really crowded and the
movie theater was huge. After, they asked about techniques used in the movie
like camera’s position and concepts even though most of then wasn’t really
working in the movie industry. In other hand, the north-Americans were really
interested in the characters. A lot of them came to me telling personal stories
of how a character was similar to someone they knew (…), for example. They
transported the story to their reality. I wasn’t expecting such an enthusiastic
public; they can see themselves inside the movie (…). I’m glad with the
international reception.
What about Brazil?
Here a lot
of people have seen it. It’s not like “Elite Squad” (drama/action), it’s not a
comedy, it’s almost indescribable. Anyway, a lot of people come to me to talk
about the movie, through email or even in the streets. What makes me happy
isn’t even the quantity but the fact that these people are diving into this
universe of the story. This is the best part of being an artist; is to provide
the ability of diving into the piece to the public that has any contact with
it.