Virtuous transforms the search for the perfect woman into a terrifyingly realistic horror
There is something particularly disturbing in a horror film when what should provoke strangeness seems too familiar. In Virtuous, the new feature film by Cíntia Domit Bittar, the horror is born precisely from this proximity. By delving into the universe of trad wives, the so-called traditional wives who gained strength on social media by defending a femininity based on submission, marriage, motherhood, and certain interpretations of biblical precepts, the film constructs a biting satire about women who seek to achieve an ideal of perfection that may not even exist.
Virtuous follows three women selected to participate in an exclusive retreat led by the admirable and inspiring Virgínia Heinzel, played by Bruna Linzmeyer. The promise is tempting for those who believe in that universe: an immersion capable of teaching them to become better women, wives, and mothers. What begins as an experience of personal improvement, however, gradually takes on disturbing contours and transforms that journey into something terrifying.
The screenplay, written by Cíntia Domit Bittar and Fernanda Capua, finds particularly fertile ground in the trad wives movement because it doesn’t limit itself to ridiculing its characters. There are different relationships with that discourse.
During the retreat, the women learn what supposedly constitutes an exemplary wife. It’s necessary to wake up early, prepare food and the husband’s lunchbox, know the correct arrangement of elements on a table, take care of the house, the family, pray, and understand their role within the marriage. The man provides and protects; the woman cares. Family moments are sacred.
But, faced with so many rules about how to care for others, a question begins to run through the film: when do these women take care of themselves?
Submission also becomes a curiously more complex discussion than it initially seems. At a certain point, the argument arises that we are all submissive to something. We are submissive to work, to bosses, to feelings, to expectations, and to people. This realization provokes an interesting break in the automatic rejection of the word “submission.” Ultimately, in some way, we are constantly subjected to structures that organize our lives.
The film, however, leads this reflection to another question: does recognizing that we all submit to something mean that a woman should deliberately choose submission to her husband?
This ability to start from a statement that contains some truth to reveal the consequences of the conclusion built from it is one of the characteristics that makes Virtuosas more intelligent than a simple satire.
And its intelligence is not only in the dialogues.
Perhaps one of the most interesting layers of the film lies precisely in the choices made around the story. Casting Bruna Linzmeyer to occupy a central position within a universe that preaches an extremely specific model of femininity creates, in itself, a provocative contradiction between character, interpreter, and discourse. The same happens when other figures publicly associated with discourses very different from those defended by the characters appear in that environment.
The location also seems to participate in the joke. Using a house associated with the recordings of a program marked by a very different representation of behavior, desire, and relationships, as a space for a retreat intended to manufacture “better women” is an irony that hardly goes unnoticed. In Virtuosas, setting and cast do not function merely as technical elements: they become part of the commentary.
That is precisely why the film seems to be built in layers. There’s what the characters say, what they do when they’re being watched, and what they reveal when they believe no one is looking.
From then on, the very idea of virtue begins to be questioned.
Does being virtuous mean following a list of behaviors? Does attending church, praying, and publicly defending certain values necessarily make someone a virtuous person? What happens when the discourse of love, family, and morality coexists with violence, cruelty, and a lack of empathy?
Virtuous Women doesn’t seem interested in attacking faith itself, but in observing what happens when it becomes an instrument of control and a performance of moral superiority. There is a huge difference between believing and using belief as authorization to control other people’s lives – and the film finds its horror precisely in this space.
Then another uncomfortable question arises: are these women really what they teach other women to be?
It is in this distance between discourse and practice that the acidic humor of Virtuous Women finds terror.
More than scaring through the traditional mechanisms of the genre, the film disturbs because of the possibility of recognizing its discourses outside the movie theater. The horror lies in realizing how far someone can feel entitled to go when they believe they are acting in the name of God, family, or morality.
When a conviction ceases to guide one’s own life and begins to justify what is imposed on others, the consequences can be far more frightening than any supernatural element.
In the end, perhaps the most interesting provocation lies precisely in the title.
Who are the virtuous women, after all?