One of the greatest qualities of a good comedian, a good humorist, is the power of observation. The best jokes are found when looking at the everyday: those everyday insights that we all identify with. Paul Gustavo was without a doubt someone who took this quality to the extreme. Observing her own mother and her surroundings, she offered us a true theatrical and later cinematic phenomenon: Minha Mãe é uma Peça.
Sadly, the actor, comedian, producer and screenwriter passed away in May 2021. At the same time, he left us orphans of Dona Hermínia, a character who had accepted us all with her love as we are: imperfect. However, there is one final act of this show. An encore.
premiere at Prime video this Friday (16) the documentary motherfucker🇧🇷 Originally conceived as a simple recording of the backstage area and the making of the piece of the same name, the production eventually became a unique report and a great tribute to Paulo Gustavo.
The majority of the film was shot in 2019, when the comedian had a brilliant idea: to travel around Brazil with his mother. Dea Lucia someone who is also incredibly talented and struggling and has sung into the night to raise two children. And with a sharp sense of humor, which he passed on to his son along with his DNA.
In this way, the world would be lucky enough to meet the person who inspired Dona Hermínia, who laughs with her great jokes firsthand next to her son.
In this way we see, from an intimate perspective and without intermediaries, how Paulo Gustavo was on a daily basis. With his look, he turned everyday life into scathing humor, with the main jokes quickly being incorporated into the show. It is a unique privilege: to watch the humor being born from the cabin.
But as fate would have it, another making of a brilliant career turned out to be something else. In this way, the director (and friend of Paulo Gustavo) Susanne Garcia little by little he adds his touch to the Amazon documentation, adding not only the interviews with the people closest to him to the nostalgic look, but also the professional career of the now biographical.
The union is perfect. After all, Gustavo is much more than Dona Hermínia, but it was the character that undeniably made him a star — and to see his rise to fame intermingled with a tribute to the actor’s reallife mother creates an odd sense of a cycle that never ends feeds on forever.
Susana Garcia also doesn’t make the (unexpected) mistake of idolizing her old friend. We see a real Paulo Gustavo with his fears, worries, insecurities, difficulties… The difference is that somehow he remade these moments through laughter. It’s not like the actor hid them, but he used humor to make a fool of himself, which prompted both laughter and thought.
The first change of tone in Filho da Mãe is when Paulo Gustavo and his husband, Thales Bretas, reveal they are going to be parents. An explosion of joy. The second shortly after is the arrival of Covid19. Stopped shows, isolation, fear, sadness.
This is where the original making of footage ends, but the film features other footage videos from the family’s personal collection, social media posts and interviews that add another dimension to the biographical: someone with a big heart who transformed that sentiment Worries. Those who are after the stage mates seen in the first part of the film send help and money.
Dona Hermínia was more than a character or homage to her mother: she was her own interpreter’s maternal sentiment.
Paulo Gustavo’s career among us ended on May 4th, 2021, exactly 15 years after the premiere of Minha Mãe é uma Peça on stage. For 15 years we have had the privilege of seeing this show. However, as the ending of Filho da Mãe makes clear, the performance is not over yet. Paulo Gustavo is still alive in the work he left, in this documentary and in what he has done for others, whether directly or through the love of Dona Hermínia.
Not least because there is no shortage of stories about people and families who have been touched by the play or the three films in the cinema franchise. Or the Paulo Gustavo law aimed at promoting cultural production in our country.
And it all started with observation and the purest look one can have, the first in our lives: that of a son or daughter for his own mother.
