The Business Women’s Club (2024)

When a film tries to cover too much territory, it’s often doomed to failure. And such is the case with writer-director Anna Muylaert’s latest feature offering, a picture with an intriguing premise that ultimately doesn’t know where it’s trying to go or what it’s trying to say. This wildly meandering, supremely unfocused (alleged) dark comedy tells the tale of an exclusive São Paulo country club run by women that has fallen on hard times. To prop up the facility’s reputation, the club’s president (Cristina Pereira) arranges to have what she believes to be a puff piece written about it by a neophyte journalist (Rafael Vitti) (who just happens to be her grandson), accompanied by the images of a renowned photographer (Luis Miranda). On the day of the interviews for the article, the organization’s board members assemble at the club, where viewers soon learn that virtually all of them are polished but greedy, unsavory, unprincipled individuals who try to do whatever it takes to protect their reputations – and to stay out of jail. But, in the midst of all this intrigue and subterfuge, all hell breaks loose when three of the president’s pet jaguars escape from their confines at the club and begin running rampant throughout the property. This is where the film falls apart, turning silly, directionless, inconsistent and gratuitous as everyone scrambles to protect their own hides from creatures depicted with some of the worst CGI effects I’ve seen since the overhyped Bollywood spectacle “RRR” (2022). What’s more, unexplained (and ultimately unresolved) story threads emerge from this narrative chaos. In many respects, the film tries to adopt a metaphorically satirical approach in a less-than-successful attempt at making statements about Brazilian politics, government, business and society, with scathing though obvious criticisms about its hypocritical religious practices and inept environmental policies. And then there are this offering’s strangely handled gender aspects. This is most notable in its ubiquitous presentation of inexplicably androgynous, weak-willed males and women who have made misogyny an artform, elements that send questionably disempowering (some might even say woefully inappropriate) messages to viewers, despite the comeuppance experienced by those associated with such behavior. From this, it’s thus easy to see how this is an unduly overstuffed production that comes across as more muddle than riddle and undermines what could have been an engaging premise if better handled. Put simply, this one is a cinematic mess that’s easily passed over.