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A house where nothing matters

Alice (Carla Ribas) is a fortyish lady who lives with her husband, three sons, and her mother in a messy but not filthy São Paulo apartment. Everything about her life is mundane. All of the character's lives in this tale are pretty much along the same lines. Alice works as a manicurist, commuting by bus every day to a not very good but not very bad job. Her husband, Lindomar (Zécarlos Machado), is a cab driver who works whenever he feels like it, which isn't all that often. He prefers playing dominoes and other women. The three boys are all between the ages of fifteen and twenty. One is going through the normal lusting for his young girlfriend. The second is a compulsive thief with a twist of goodness. The eldest son has an anger issue and is either a homosexual or pretending to be one in order to earn some extra cash. Mom cleans up after all of them, never displaying any emotion except for the occasional look of the slightest disgust in regards to the entire lot of them.

Alice has one customer at the shop that seemingly needs a manicure and/or pedicure almost every day. She can afford it because she is married to a well to do gentleman who happens to be an ex-lover of Alice. One day he comes in for a manicure and puts the moves on her. She likes it, being as neglected as she is by her husband and is only too happy to accept his advances. At the same time we learn that her hubby is playing with the neighbor teenage girl who likes to visit Alice every day to chat. The girl tells Alice of her love for a married man and asks her for a potion to win him away from his wife. Alice doesn't suspect that she is that wife and gladly tries to help her. The young girl goes through all this with a permanently sweet, innocent smile. It's all very confusing.

When Alice finds out about the affair she is crushed and confronts the teenager. Alice fails to see that what her husband is doing is any different than what she is doing. There is no moral rudder anywhere to be found here so it's unclear if there is a message or not in "Alice's House". One can only suppose that it is all merely a slice of life exercise. However, even in a slice of life film, the audience should be able to feel something, whether it be bad or good, for at least one of the characters, but this house holds no more than a bunch of people clattering around. At least we can all feel sad about that.