HARD LABOR
A film by Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas
(Trabalhar Cansa, Brazil, 99 min.
In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Opens Friday, October 30
CINEMA VILLAGE
22 East 12th Street (between University Pl. and Fifth Ave.)
(212) 924-3364 / www.cinemavillage.com
Filmmaker in attendance on opening weekend
Young housewife Helena has always dreamed of opening her own business. When a fully-furnished vacant space opens up, she decides to finally fulfill this dream by opening a neighborhood grocery store. On the same day she signs the lease to the shop, her husband Otávio is suddenly fired from his job as an insurance executive, leaving Helena to support her husband and daughter alone.
The role reversal at home threatens to overturn the established structure of her domestic universe and ultimately begins to affect her personal relationship with her family. As pressure surmounts, Helena’s temper flares and catapults her into a psychological breakdown. When the brick walls of her building start to crumble, groceries disappear, and a mysterious black substance begins creeping through the tiles of her floor, Hard Labor takes a dark and suspenseful turn. Is it supernatural, or is it the manifestation of Helena’s paranoia and disintegrating psyche?
A subtle neo-noir thriller wrapped in unconventional horror elements,Hard Labor is a disturbing approach to an otherwise common crisis of a middle class family struggling to make it in a capitalist society.
