Review: Brazilian 'Three Summers' is a wry comedy-drama about the oblivious rich and the people left in their wake

Think back to the first episode of “Schitt’s Creek,” and imagine that instead of following the suddenly impoverished Rose family to their small town, you instead watch the mansion’s maid trying to make ends meet. That’s the idea at play in the merrily offbeat Brazilian comedy-drama “Three Summers.”

Madalena (played by Regina Casé) is the head housekeeper for a rich couple, Marta (Gisele Fróes) and Edgar (Otávio Müller), at their ocieanside mansion. When we meet them, the couple s throwing a lavish anniversary party in December 2015, and Madalena is busy trying to keep everything flowing.

Madalena also has a side hustle, a takeout dining service, running through the kitchen. That is a precursor to her dream, of starting her own roadside food kiosk. Director Sandra Kogut (who co-wrote with Iana Cossoy Paro) shows, in the movie’s first scenes, Madalena negotiating with a real estate agent for the land on which to build the kiosk — and later getting a loan from Edgar, a prosperous contractor, to finalize the deal.

Act II is in December 2016, and things have changed. Marta and Edgar are gone, having left behind Edgar’s aged father, Lira (played by Gisele Fróes’ real-life father, Rogério Fróes). Madalena cares for Lira, while also trying to juggle expenses to pay the staff, even holding a yard sale of Marta’s abandoned designer duds and using Edgar’s boats to charter tours of the harbor. Then the police show up with a warrant, looking for the ill-gotten gains from Edgar’s corrupt building deals — which puts Madalena’s kiosk in jeopardy.

Act II is a year later, and Madalena’s entrepreneurial zeal has extended to renting out the house to produce TV commercials.

Kogut deftly switches from comedy to drama throughout the story, as the absurdity of Madalena’s get-rich-quick plans bumps up against the despair that she and the other servants feel at being left behind by their uncaring employers. And she has, in Casé, a quick-witted performer who can keep pace with the hairpin turns of the story’s emotional arc.

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‘Three Summers’

★★★

Available starting Friday, November 27, on streaming via the Salt Lake Film Society virtual cinema, SLFS@Home. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language. Running time: 94 minutes; in Portuguese with subtitles.