Good Manners review – superbly strange nanny horror

Sao Paulo is transformed into a spooky fairytale landscape in this elegant, unsettling tale of a pregnant woman and her prospective employee

There's an enjoyably inscrutable performance at the heart of this Brazilian fairytale for grownups. Clara (Isabel Zuaa), an unsmiling mystery women, arrives at the luxurious Sao Paulo apartment of pregnant Ana (Marjorie Estiano), to be interviewed for the position of nanny. But is that really the role on offer? And is Clara an entirely honest applicant?

The first third of this two-hour-plus film keeps us wondering. It's clear that something is off between the women, but impossible to determine where the balance of power lies. Is this a Rosemary's Baby-style horror about satanic foetus worship? A Parasite-like study of the subversive intimacy between domestic servant and employer? Or some unholy combination of the two? Then, with all the sprightly mischief of one of Ana's country-music workout videos, the plot dances off again, in an entirely different direction.