28/02/2023 - BERLINALE 2023: João Canijo presents the “reverse” of his main competition title, although the two films don’t really mirror each other, with this one coming off as a lacklustre copy

João Canijo has made two Berlinale-hosted films with one (superb) cast, orbiting around one (important) theme: toxic motherhood. And while Bad Living [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: João Canijo
film profile], the Silver Bear Jury Prize winner, is nuanced and complex, its Encounters-screened sibling, Living Bad [+see also:
trailer
interview: João Canijo
film profile], is, to keep the family metaphor, younger and less ambiguous in its storytelling and its opinions. Both films are set in the same hotel in rural Portugal and focus on people who either stay there or run it. Bad Living was about the owners, while in Living Bad, the guests – two families, to be exact – are at the centre of the story.

Both movies have an identical structure, and revolve around an overbearing mother, her daughter and her significant other. Elisa (Leonor Silveira) has come to the hotel for the weekend with her daughter Graça (Lia Carvalho) and her son-in-law Jaime (Nuno Lopes), with whom she is having a secret affair. Elisa often publicly humiliates Graça and mistreats her, as if her daughter were someone inferior, incapable or simply an idiot. It comes as no surprise that her marriage with Jaime is abusive, as Graça is treated like an object, rather than as a person. Similar mother-daughter dynamics are observed between Judite (Beatriz Batarda) and Alice (Carolina Amaral), who is joined by her girlfriend Julia (Leonor Vasconcelos), to a certain extent the most grown-up and emotionally stable person in the entire hotel.

Canijofollows these two peculiar ménages à trois in a reserved and curious manner. As in his other film, he sticks to creating “tableau” shots and leaves some parts of each scene outside the frame, but this time, it’s for a different reason. The frames are like a cage or a prison for the protagonists. Neither of the daughters can escape the influence of their mothers – one is sinking into a toxic relationship, while the other one can’t open herself up to a healthy one. The emotional cruelty and the veiled yet palpable tension are mesmerising as we actually watch Living Bad, but since it offers us less on the intellectual level, the experience doesn’t really stick after the end credits have rolled. This is not the case for Bad Living, which excelled by showing complex emotional entanglements and a narrative that is far less black and white. This doesn’t mean that Living Bad is a failure or even a bad film. It’s just that sometimes, a reverse shot doesn’t add anything extra; it just echoes what we have already seen.

Living Bad is a Portuguese-French co-production, with Lisbon-based Midas Filmes serving as the producer and Parisian outfit Les Films de l’Après-Midi on board as the co-producer. The worldwide rights are held by Portugal Film – Portuguese Film Agency.