Brazilian cinema has grown up since the sex-comedy days of the ’70s, when Sonia Braga shook her booty in sultry farces like Xica and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. At least the heroines have, as witness the brilliant, Oscar-nominated Fernanda Montenegro in Central Station or the fascinating Regina Casé (sometimes she looks like Frances McDormand, at other times like Jay Leno) in Andrucha Waddington’s seductive Me You Them. Set in Brazil’s Northeast, the same haunted wasteland as in Central Station, the film unfolds with a seasonal pace and grace as abandoned, pregnant Darlene (Casé) returns home determined not to be a victim. Instead she bests Braga’s Dona Flor by having not two but three husbands, all of them living.

Number one is elderly Osias (Lima Duarte), who offers her a home if she’ll do all the housework. Number two is Zezinho (Stênio Garcia), Osias’s equally long-in-the-tooth cousin, who moves in and does the cooking. Babies come and go, with the precise patrimony left unexamined until husband number three, young migrant stud Ciro (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos), shows up and the ménage seems ready to collapse amid jealousy, possessiveness, and the fear of death. Although it ends on a false note, Me You Them rings true with its depiction of the passage of time and the depth, tenuousness, and dignity of intimate relationships.