Now this was a fun ride of the movie! O Clube das Mulheres de Negócios (The Business Women’s Club) serves as a satirical gender-bent eat-the-rich move. We follow the journalist Candinho, played by Rafael Vitti, and photographer Jongo, played by Luís Miranda, as they try to uncover the controversies surrounding several of Brazil’s most powerful business women. Their already difficult task takes a turn for the worse when they discover that there are jaguars on the loose at fault of Cesárea (Cristina Pereira), Candinho’s grandmother and owner of the property the movie plays out at.
The Business Women’s club is a satirical comedy that plays with gender roles and power play. It is a sharp critique of Brazilian society and how women suffer in the patriarchy. This was one of the movies that had a guest come on for the festival, so I got to hear from Shirley Cruz, who played the Bishop, in a Q&A after the showing! In the Q&A Cruz was asked about various topics, both related to the movie and to living as a woman in Brazil.
The first question from the crowd was how she came to the movie, to which she answered that Anna Muylaert (director of The Business Women’s Club) is a director everyone wants to work with in Brazil, a director who uses cinema as a weapon to fight for women’s rights. Cruz and Muylaert knew each other before the movie, and Cruz has had roles in other movies she’s directed, even starring as the main character of the upcoming film A Melhor Mãe do Mundo.
Cruz was also asked what feminism meant to her, and the first thing she said was that “This was a very easy question! Look at me, I’m a black woman in Brazil!” (paraphrasing by me), before elaborating that feminism is everything to her, it is resistance.
The next question from the audience was wondering if women like the ones in the movie really existed in Brazil, if Brazilian business women are corrupt. (note: here i think the person asking the question misunderstood the entire movie cuz the message of the movie is that the women in the film represent how business men act in the real world…) Here the answer was that the women in the film are used as a tool used by the director to show men how they act, but with the roles reversed, the director likes to play with gender reversal in order to think and reflect on different societal issues. Further Cruz elaborates that feminicide is a huge issue in Brazil, so by swapping the genders in the film the movie makes the viewer question the gender inequality of the real world. Brazil is a divided country, where the power is dominated by men, and this inequality was only strengthened after the pandemic. Just like Brazilian society, the movie’s reception was also very divided: people either loved it or hated it), Cruz explains.
Fourth question (second to last, so bare with me!) was how difficult it is for women to make films and get into the industry in Brazil. Cruz stated that this is no easy task in a misogynist country like Brazil, in a misogynist world like the one we live in. However the internet changed the way cinema worked, that the internet provided a wider access to education related to filmmaking. Despite this it is still very difficult for women to “make it” in Brazilian cinema, especially when there are big corporations working actively to make it harder to respect women in all aspects of life.
The end of the Q&A was a bit more light hearted, as the last question to be asked was what the jaguars represented in the movie. To this, Cruz let out a big laugh before saying there were so many possible answers to this question, but she would give us two: the first interpretation she gave us was that the jaguars represent money and power itself, they are the motif of the 50-real-bill, to show us how money and power corrupts and ruins people’s lives. The second interpretation was how Muyleart is known in the industry as a jaguar, like a nickname, as a symbol both for herself but also for womankind as people with immense power that you shouldn’t mess with, just like you shouldn’t mess with the powerful animal that is the Jaguar.
All in all, this was a fun watch, a movie packed with symbolism and satire. It is an important film that makes a good case for the gender inequality and bizarre behaviour we accept when directed at women but reject when directed at men.
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