Stupid Wife

There’s a totally spoiler-free review which is facile, and a mostly spoiler free review that still gives plenty to enjoy but gives some more context.

First up, spoiler-free: Hot Brazilian lesbians. Enjoy.

We’re left on a cliffhanger so I hope there will be another season (they made a Christmas special, which is officially listed as a second season) but I’m not sure. This is a tiny web show and whether they can make another season or they’ll move on to another project remains to be seen.

Also, a friendly warning: you’ll be using subtitles unless your conversational Brazilian Portuguese is really up to speed. I speak just enough classical Portuguese to recognise a tiny amount of what they’re saying and, now, to recognise more words that have deviated from what I learnt. But there’s absolutely no way I can follow what’s going on here, it really is odd words, and I probably wouldn’t have started to catch them without the subtitles.

Mild Spoilers from here on

We start with a group of friends at law school. The relationships aren’t particularly clear but we meet Luiza (Luh) who is a left-wing firebrand and Valentina (Tina) who comes from wealth and privilege and espouses right-wing rhetoric. (While the setting and politics in Brazil are different, if you imagine a fervent AOC fan and a devout Trumpist you’re getting the right kind of idea.) Luh hates Tina and everything she stands for, but after she’s stormed off at Tina’s latest provocation, it turns out Tina is mostly saying things to wind her up because “she’s so hot when she’s angry.” (Tina is not wrong, but how immature?)

A little later, Luh has been stood up by a friend (I think it’s her bff who is off with her bf, later husband, but names weren’t fixed well at this point) and is waiting an hour for the bus. Up roars Tina on her bike, scaring Luh at first, but then giving her a lift home after refusing to leave her there alone.

The next morning Luh wakes up in a different room and with Tina in bed, snuggled up next to her. Understandably she freaks out, but the shocks keep coming when she sees herself in the mirror and is a decade older, when they’ve got a son and so on…

Yes, we’re in the world of acute onset amnesia and, if this wasn’t a small number of 20 minute episodes on YouTube I’d probably have walked away. I like to think I’m not shallow enough to just stay for two hot Brazilian lesbians… but maybe I’m wrong. On the plus side we get an enemy-to-lover story in a usual context: the “enemy” is your wife and madly in love with you. (Luiza tries, briefly, to deny it, but everyone, including her parents and the mirror, tell her it’s the truth.) That gives it a twist that turns E2L (not really my favourite genre, sorry MJ) into something different. There’s a lot of times when they keep secrets, particularly Luh, and I flip-flopped between wanting to slap her for being daft and accepting that she’s under real emotional stress, why would Luh confide in her worst enemy? Why would she act like a mature adult when she’s feeling like a 21-year old? Does it do a perfect job? Obviously not, if it did I wouldn’t be flip-flopping, I’d be more firmly on the side of acceptance. I will probably never be 100% on that side, it’s a vastly overused story mechanic but at least here they did manage to make me forgive it a chunk of times and your mileage may vary.

I also liked, although I’m not going to go into reasons, that they didn’t stick solely to Luh’s trauma. We see, and I certainly felt, Tina’s struggles with trying to live with a formerly loving wife who has suddenly converted into a hostile presence who withdraws from touches, then blows hot and cold as the season develops and she starts to transition from enemy to lover.

There are plenty of twists along the way, mostly that’s good, they feel organic, very occasionally they veer into feeling a bit too much like a soap-opera - oh, things are going well, how can we give them more tension? - but, by and large it’s well handled.

While hot, young (at least from my perspective, they’re both in their early 30’s), Brazilian lesbians might help ease me through the rough patches in the story-telling, there are more than enough good bits of story-telling that I don’t feel like a shallow, horny pervert watching just for the pretty faces.

I should also say, this is on YouTube, it’s pretty much PG. There’s some nice lingerie, there’s a shower sex scene with clenching fingers, kisses on the back (and on the lips) and so on. In the U.K. it wouldn’t get a PG rating seriously, but it might get a 12A. Mild, brief sexual content. There’s a lot implied but nothing actually shown.

Bechdel Test: Pass. We’ve got female co-leads and they talk to each other about everything under the sun. Sometimes that’s Tina's annoying brother, their son, either of their fathers and other random men. But they talk about their jobs, their favourite places and so much more, so it’s an easy pass. Luh, in particular, also has therapy and a gaggle of female friends so there’s a lot of other conversations that pass besides those of the main couple.

Ko Test: Null. Did I mention they were hot Brazilians yet? They speak Brazilian Portuguese, with subtitles. Applying a test for Hollywood doesn’t work.

Russo Test: Pass, well duh. The central characters are women married to each other. They don’t label themselves, but they’re clearly each some flavour of wlw person.